Andante Music Practice Journal Reviews

There is a lot that I love about AndanteMusicPracticeJournal. It’s great to be able to have multiple profiles to track different areas of your practice. This benefits those working in multiple instruments. It’s simple and pleasant design. I really like the widget functionality so you can quickly start a practice session with a button on your Home Screen! On top of that it’s a very fair price.

There are a few reasons why I have given this 4 stars instead of 5. Mainly that there is no section to create a list for practice material that you can link to your practice sessions. It would be more efficient just click desired material from the list to automatically name the practice session. I think having the option to start a session untitled is good too but at the end of the practice session maybe you could choose to name it or select from your predetermined material in a list. Pipe dreams for me would be to then also save data on time spent practicing specific material.

Great little practice tool worth the $5 feature unlock fee. Only request: please make practice days a bit smarter. I often practice between 2300 and 0100 in the evening, and every single session involves going back to edit the date and time because Andante claims I’ve already done tomorrow’s session.

Basically, adding a small filter even on just at the view level so that anything before say 0300 counts as the previous days practice would dramatically improve the experience for night owls, while still supporting those maniacs who wake up at 3 or 4am because Jocko tells them to.

Anyway, thank you for helping give some structure and accountability to my piano journey.

I’ve tried a few practice apps and were satisfied with them. I like this one best because there’s not any added things I don’t need, like music or metronomes. I went ahead and paid the $3.99 for the full bundle because I found the stats and calendar to be very useful. The ONLY reason I didn’t give it a 5 star rating is because I would like to be able to set daily reminders within AndanteMusicPracticeJournal . Sometimes life and tasks become overwhelming and I let the time slip away and forget to practice. I think having a reminder within AndanteMusicPracticeJournal would make me feel like I’m being held accountable a little more. If at some point a reminder setting is incorporated, I will gladly re-review it. Other than that, I’m really diggin AndanteMusicPracticeJournal! Download it and shell out the $3.99 for the full version and you will not be disappointed!! UPDATE: Practice Reminders have been implemented, so, as I said I would, I am now giving it a 5 star rating!! You can set reminders for 1 day, or up to 7 days! Awesome job y’all!! Thank you!

UPDATE:
The creators of AndanteMusicPracticeJournal actually listen to your feedback. They reached out to me after my initial review and kept me updated on the upcoming updates, and listened to my other suggestions. When they would make an update, they would contact me and let me know, and to ask me how it was working. Since my first review, they have completed all of the suggestions I made, along with others by other users. So, having said that, and the fact they have updated AndanteMusicPracticeJournal to the specifications I requested, I wish I could go in and give it a 10 star rating. The fact that I can use my iPad for my practice videos and music, and use my iPhone to actually set the timer and such in Andante, and it all updates to the iPad app also, has me ecstatic! I cannot brag on how well of a job these inventors have done, and their customer service. Thank y’all for a job magnificently done!!

For a musician I believe AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is an absolute must. It is easy to begin logging a practice session. I am able to create an audio log of my practice session. After my practice session I am able to give a rundown of how it went, my mood, my concentration level and notes on what I continue need to work on. I use the journal feature to set goals. Any time I practice I open AndanteMusicPracticeJournal, when I go to my vocal lessons I open AndanteMusicPracticeJournal to remember the items my instructor would like me to work on. It tracks my practice habits. I pay for the Pro version and I feel the features justify the purchase, but even the free version of AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is powerful. It supports modern iPad/iPhone OS features. It has Lock Screen widgets and Live Updates. Again, for musicians of any level AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is incredibly useful.

I was trying the Soundbrenner Core 2 in order to track my progress with the guitar. It was just disappointing and awful. I looked for an app that could help me with that so I could just return that other thing and came across Andante. It’s easy to use, does everything the Core 2 allegedly does —except for the vibrating metronome– and does it flawlessly. It is motivating, it has all I need (practice sessions tracker, metronome, timer, and tuner) and it’s not a hassle. I’m happy I came across AndanteMusicPracticeJournal and I recommend everyone who wants to seriously get to work with a music instrument to use it. That 😊🎶

The best app!

Honestly one of the best resources I’ve found to manage my practicing. I do wish I could have a drone going while looking at how much time I’ve been practicing instead of the drone turning off when I exit that section. I also wish I could add friends who have AndanteMusicPracticeJournal to “compete” against each other. (Not really important, just think that would be cool). The only thing I haven’t really liked is the metronome variability and that there isn’t a tuner. Other than that- the fact that I can add other profiles for other things like cello, voice, piano, ect. is amazing! I haven’t found a better resource than this one!

This is such an awesome app! It gives me much more motivation to practice intentionally by reducing the barrier against doing so; for instance, I can decide to set a timer in AndanteMusicPracticeJournal and make my mental goal to ‘get this passage fluid in 10 minutes or less’, and use a metronome on the same screen. The timer is always there, counting down and reminding me that I have something to focus on. Even if I don’t achieve my goal, I have still spent 10 minutes narrowly focusing on a section, which is so much better than playing through a piece from beginning to end and wasting half of that time. The streak feature makes me have a fun reason to practice every day.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you. I’m so thankful that AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is so useful. It’s very simple. It does exactly what you need. I love the addition of keeping track of your mood and your focus. I never really thought about doing that and having Notes for each practice session is extremely awesome. There is a journal you can have multiple profiles, so for example, I play piano and saxophone, and I write music, and I need to practice various theory, all of which I can make a profile for and keep track of. I would’ve paid three times with AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is it charging. So thankful this is not a subscription. Thank you again for putting the time and effort into this. It even has shortcuts integration into iOS making this just perfect for my workflow.

You can create several different profiles to keep mange of all your disciplines, track your progress by name or hours practiced, and journal the experience. It has a built-in metronome, tuner and timer- keeping everything in one place. Another feature is the daily goal and streaks for each profile. It helps me create realistic goals for my day-to-days and promotes consistency.

The layout is very clean and has a dark theme option. It also displays its main timer on the lockscreen which helps prevent accidental scrolling. It’s also available as a widget - handy when you need reminder or a small moment of celebration.

Best part of it all, it’s not run by a corporation, but an individual. That tip jar lets me support the creator of this awesome app :)

AndanteMusicPracticeJournal has worked amazingly well for me so far! It has all the features I need to record my practices across multiple instruments and is something I use daily. The streak feature has been instrumental (lol no pun intended) in keeping me motivated to practice consistently and I love the data analytics for length of practice, focus, and mood.

For the developers, I have one suggestion:

My mood often changes during(and as a result of)my practice. I would love to be able to record that; perhaps a “mood before” and “mood after” tracker could fulfill this need. The data analytics could then tell me my:
-Avg. mood per practice
-Avg. change in mood per practice and
-whether my net change in mood per practice was primarily positive or negative

Cross-referenced with my practice time and focus stats, this ‘change in mood’ feature would enable me to modify my practice habits in order to achieve the most positive mood and greatest post-practice feeling of fulfillment. It is something I would like to see added to AndanteMusicPracticeJournal , if you’re open to the idea!

I recommend Andante to all my students, peers, and colleagues—100% worth using, for any musicians out there (pro, student, and amateur alike). Would give this 6 stars out of 5, if I could 😁❤️💯🎻🎹

I love AndanteMusicPracticeJournal, I use it every day and have uploaded some of my hand written journal notes into it bc of how easy it is to use.

The only issue I’ve had was where I tried to sync my iPad and iPhone. I think there was some user error that caused two profiles to combine and duplicate/triple/quadruple some of my practice sessions. Since deleting AndanteMusicPracticeJournal on my iPad and all of the extra sessions my app has been quite wonky. Home Screen does not show my streak progress and the calendar in the page is completely white. My number of hours have also been inconsistent (that may be from AndanteMusicPracticeJournal updating after deleting all of the duplicated sessions). Either way, I’m worried it isn’t saving data properly anymore (and the streaks feature really helps keep me motivated... not having it has been a bummer)

This is a simple, easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, perfect little tool. A lot better than the practice logs I had to write out as a kid! I’m an adult learning guitar for the first time and mostly just wanted to track total practice time so I had some sense of progress—how many hours of practice it actually took to get to wherever I am. This is perfect for that and more and couldn’t be easier to use. I actually find it super motivating too—I never want to break that practice streak! The metronome, the timer, the practice streaks, the graphical representations and stats are all great. So glad I searched and found this right when I started to learn. I bought the premium version even though I don’t really need/use the features because I’m just so grateful for this lovely app. I especially like the dark mode so my only suggestion would be that I wish I could set it that way in AndanteMusicPracticeJournal , regardless of whether my phone is in dark mode or not. Thanks so much for developing this!

I’ve been picking up the bass clarinet after playing the regular for a couple years, and I’m not unmotivated to practice, I just forget. AndanteMusicPracticeJournal doesn’t set reminders, which is fine by me, but the widget on my Home Screen looks so nice with my streak, breaking it would be so sad!
AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is very aesthetically pleasing and I think it is reasonably priced, and also perfect to use without a subscription! Very cool to see my hours stack up.
I wish two things, though: I think a way to sort practice sessions into categories, like a song you’re practicing or something, to see how long you’ve spent on that specifically would be cool. I also would like some kind of reward for hours or streaks, not like a full on virtual pet or anything, but just a little badge or something. These are obviously very minor gripes and I love AndanteMusicPracticeJournal regardless!

I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is. I’ve been a pianist for five years now, and recently started learning more advanced stuff, like Chopin. So I decided to try to find an app that would log how long I practice for. And let me tell you, AndanteMusicPracticeJournal thoroughly exceeded my expectations. It logs your practicing sessions, sums it up, asks you about your focus, your mood, and totals your average focus, mood, and practice (all while being absolutely adorable). It also has a notepad, so you can write stuff about pieces your learning, etc. And, get ready for this, it only asks you to purchase stuff unless you click on stuff you don’t have access to. It motivated me to practice even more than I normally would! Today, I practiced for 4 hours, and this is the first day I’ve ever had AndanteMusicPracticeJournal. Would recommend AndanteMusicPracticeJournal any day!!

AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is phenomenal. There are no ads, no AI slop, no begging**. The interface is clean and intuitive*, and the base app (not Pro) is fully usable and sufficient for 99% of your practicing needs. For those reasons alone, I applaud the developer for all their effort and care.

I would seriously consider buying lifetime just out of support for the developer, but there are just a few papercuts that hold me back. They include:
- The triple dot icon used to show recordings in both the practice view and the list item view (looking at a session after practice) does not intuitively convey the idea of opening the recording list. It should probably be a button with text or in a drop down because an icon is not sufficient.
- There's no way to link or reference practice sessions in the journal. Perhaps something like GitHub's issue references would work, but instead it would add a button to the keyboard that opens a picker for a practice session to then embed a reference to rather than typing something like #number.

**The only scummy part of AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is that it is possible to trigger a request to buy the pro version from simply using the free interface. For instance, instead of not showing the session notes at all, the end of session view shows a fake session notes that turns out to be an advertisement for the pro version.

Okay, hear me out. Before I give my reason for only 4 stars let me just say, I love AndanteMusicPracticeJournal. For me, it has been a game changer. I struggle with organization, but AndanteMusicPracticeJournal has helped me become more methodical with, and reflective of, my practice routine. So 4 stars…I would like to be able to group alike practice sessions into groups. For example, I have a practice session named “Scales in sixths” but I also have a session called “Scales in Tenths.” I want to have data on how often I practiced scales in general. So if I switched these 2 up everyday, I could have a diagnostic saying that I hit my scales everyday. I would do the same for “Chord Practice” “Improv” “Classical Pieces” etc. That way I wouldn’t have to write in the notes all the time. The downside of just writing “Scale Practice” as a session is that I have to go into the session to look at the notes to see exactly what I practiced. Does this make sense? Anyway…AWESOME APP!

Andante has changed the way I practice. The ability to return to my previous practice session's notes and think critically about how to approach my practice time has helped me optimize every minute of my practice, and make real change in my routine. Additionally, being able to see my habits change over time, and being able to keep longer and longer streaks as AndanteMusicPracticeJournal keeps me focused and motivated is helpful to my relationship with practice. Some of the features could use some improvement, such as a more customizable metronome and maybe the ability to customize metrics that factor into your practice session, such as preparation and environment in addition to mood and focus, though the simplicity of AndanteMusicPracticeJournal also makes it extremely user friendly. I would recommend AndanteMusicPracticeJournal for anyone interested in tracking practice of any age. It is super intuitive and user friendly.

I use Andante every day to track my practice and have for about 4 years now (with ~1850 hours of practice clocked). It’s almost a one stop shop for basic practice resources.

My one complaint is with the drones. They lack flexibility since they are stuck at 440 hz which for many musicians is not the frequency we prefer. If you could choose the frequency of the drone i doubt I would need any other app while practicing. I also wish you could change the octave for the string drone. I love the quality of the string drone but it’s stuck in a single octave and I find the C is too low to be very helpful while practicing in a higher register.

These changes, and maybe also a traditional tuner would make this the definitive app for practicing, and although these functions haven’t been noticeably touched in the years I’ve used AndanteMusicPracticeJournal , I hope they are updated because I plan to continue using AndanteMusicPracticeJournal

I bought AndanteMusicPracticeJournal after seeing that the upgraded version was only USD 3.99, and I really wanted to pro feature of having multiple profiles (I play both violin and guitar), text notes, and to support the creator. The graphics are so cute and user-friendly (and I’m super picky about app interfaces, I really can’t stand ugly ones). The creator seems to have thought of everything—just now, I logged a practice session on the wrong profile, and I found the button to switch the practice session over in less than a second.

Honestly, I can’t even think of anything that’s missing from AndanteMusicPracticeJournal—you can record+play back, the metronome is so cute, there are built in timers, everything’s been thought of. Maybe a to-do list feature would be nice, but that’s like asking for an upgrade while sitting in first class. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is the tuner, but I’ll be devastated if AndanteMusicPracticeJournal is ever taken off AndanteMusicPracticeJournal store!! Great work by the creator, keep it up!!

I used a physical practice journal toward the end of my time in college, and when I finished I thought practice journals were just not for me. Andante proved me wrong. This is so helpful in tracking my progress and reinforcing the pride I feel in practicing, in a way that is more effortless then physically writing it down, and does the stats for instantly that I never could before. I see the micro and the macro of my practicing journey, and it’s so helpful to have my practice life in perspective like this, so that I can take control! At least try it for a month, I think you’ll enjoy it.