Review: Artusi Interactive Music Theory and Aural Skills

Written By Sasha Ishov

Artusi is a browser-based, interactive, customizable music theory and aural skills textbook that offers a wide range of courses, from music fundamentals, all the way to atonal theory. Artusi’s goal is to make music theory more accessible and engaging by providing students and educators with interactive tools that greatly streamline teaching workflows.

“Artusi is named for one of music’s great curmudgeons, the 16-17th century composer and theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi. G. M. Artusi insisted on following rules and learning by role, and Artusi the software helps instructors teach just that—we help you do the mechanical stuff so you can spend more time on the creative stuff. Giovanni, who attacked Claudio Monteverdi’s innovations as the sign of alarmingly decadent decay in musical standards, might be horrified by our innovation of using digital tools, but he’d be really happy that we help you learn counterpoint. Like, really really happy.” (Artusi About Page)

I have used Artusi for 3 courses at UC San Diego, spanning a wide range of experience levels: Fundamentals of Music (MUS 1), Basic Musicianship (MUS 2), and Music Theory and Practice (MUS 101). Artusi has served as the single textbook for an online-only course, and a complementary textbook for an in-person music theory course.

This is an article about Artusi and its features, how I use it, and how it has transformed my teaching. Learn more about my classroom technology setup.

Teaching Music Fundamentals Remotely

The first course I taught using Artusi was MUS 1A, offered as a fully online, synchronous/asynchronous,  5-week summer session course at UC San Diego. 120 students with zero prior musical enrolled in a compressed version of a 10-week course normally offered during the school year.

On paper, the class met twice per week with a 3-hour lecture, short break, and section, nearly 5 hours of continuous music instruction. I don’t know about you, but that sounds unbearable. While I understand the utility of summer courses (students can fit in a lot of course credits in a short period of time), there’s a limit to how quickly one can learn new information, especially with a skills-based course like Fundamentals of Music.

I couldn’t imagine myself enjoying a course structure like that, much less my students. Complicating matters was the fact my appointment to teach a course beginning on June 27th was only decided in mid/late May.

I knew that in order to create an experience for my students that would be (a) useful, (b) manageable, and (c) engaging, I would need to incorporate interactive tools into the course. There was zero chance I would make my students sit through ~10 hours per week of Zoom recordings for 5 weeks straight.

I wanted to find a tool that would allow me divest from a static “listening” mode in my course (lectures were pre-recorded due to the need to accomodate asynchronous participation), and invest in interactive content that students could explore at their own pace.

In my MUS 1A course, I introduced new materials via short, succinct, podcast-style lectures, which were then duplicated in Artusi. Synchronous discussion sections provided students with a direct way of providing feedback on the course, which I then used to tweak the next week’s content.

My Department’s Theory Curriculum

In my department, courses are taught in 10-week quarters. Students take the music theory cycles for 3 quarters in a row, instructors switching from quarter to quarter. While students get the benefit of getting different perspectives on music theory, the switch between quarters is often a dramatic shift for students as they adjust to different teaching styles and expectations.

Like other departments, I sometimes fill in for courses on relatively short notice. The trickiness of short course design turnarounds is compounded by the fact that even without a pandemic, MUS 1/2/101 are different year to year depending on the assigned instructor. The 2022-23 academic year was particularly challenging. Students taking remote courses missed out on in-person activities crucial to music theory and aural skills, while others transferred from community colleges without having any in-person music experience. Even this year I find tested out of prerequisites find themselves in courses above their experience level. On the other end, there are always students who are more advanced than the level of the course.

All of this made it impossible to plan my course with a fixed curriculum. I started looking for tools that could (a) accomodate multiple experience levels, (b) increase student engagement by providing live-feedback, and (c) be fair not only to my students but also my TAs.

What are TAs For?

I am thankful to have taught all of my courses with TAs. In a music theory and aural skills class, what are TAs for? Are they for grading theory assignments? What if the course has 0 TAs (the unfortunately reality for most instructors)?

In a typical paper and pencil music theory class, a great deal of the TA and instructor hours are spent grading assignments. In a basic music theory course, this means checking pitches, rhythms, intervals, etc. More advanced theory activities might have more subjectivity, but even then the options are limited. Does a human really need to be grading this?

What if music fundamentals were taught using a system that graded the basic for you, allowing instructors and TAs to focus their attention elsewhere? Adding Artusi to my teaching has altered my workflow and workload, freeing up time and energy for me and my TAs which can be diverted to more creative tasks.

Tools for Feedback and Activity Tracking

Static music theory assignments don’t provide enough feedback for students to identify what specifically they need more help with. In large-enrollment remote courses, it’s unfeasible for an instructor to give a lot of personalized feedback.

I love how Artusi gives me more useful tools to track and process student progress. Prior to Artusi, I would send students short check-in surveys to let me know how they were doing. While useful, processing the data these provided created more work.

Activity Tracking

Whenever students complete an assignment in Artusi, I can see how long it took them to complete it. At a glance, I can see what concepts were more/less difficult for students Instead of manually asking students how long it took them to learn a particular skill, I can see it in the data.

Knowing how long students spent on assignments affects course design on macro and micro levels. Zoomed-out, activity tracking allows me to adjust assignment lengths and calibrate what I focus on in lecture. On an individual level, knowing what topic(s) were difficult for a particular student allows me to better coordinate office hours, and helps my TAs plan additional review sessions as needed.

Feedback

Artusi is flexible when it comes to feedback, providing different default settings for “textbook,” “worksheet,” and “quiz” assignments. When introducing brand-new material, I like to give students live feedback (e.g., when inputting a chord, the answer is checked immediately). In my MUS 1A course, I then duplicated textbook materials in a shortened worksheet, which gave feedback upon completion. Students can be given the option to re-take a new variation of a graded assignment (the number of attempts can be limited).

Artusi makes it easy to send feedback to your instructor

Students can also leave comments directly within the assignments, which are then emailed to the course instructor. This makes it efficient for students to leave feedback and ask specific questions. In one case, a worksheet I used had a mistake, and students were able to point it out to me in a comment that I received over email.

Providing educators with tools to process activity data increases their ability to engage with (and empathize) with their students. Building communication and feedback into the instructional materials empowers students to take more ownership over their progress in the course. These simple yet powerful features are a major benefit of an interactive music theory textbook like Artusi.

An (Over)abundance of Options

Artusi provides an enormous amount of content. In addition to pre-built courses ranging from music basics to atonal theory, Artusi gives instructors with the tools to create their own courses and assignments. Melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic dictation utilize a simple interface that is easy to learn.

Educators can get as granular as they like, like defining parameters for randomly-generated exercises, or replacing musical examples. Complementing linear materials are “drills” covering a wide range of musical skills, which students can access at any point. Sometimes this abundance of choices makes it difficult to determine what exactly to use in the course.

Music Theory Sandbox or Linear Experience?

Artusi is simultaneously a curated product and a sandbox platform: it is a series of interactive textbooks, and is also a Canvas-like environment for crafting music theory content. Different courses are written by different theorist, who don’t necessarily share the same approach to introducing new materials. Like other emerging tech platforms, Artusi has added new features over time. Because of this, some of the courses don’t always line up, requiring some work to manually rework their existing curriculum.

For example, Artusi offers a “Music Theory I” and “Aural Skills I” course. In theory, these courses should line up. However, in practice, they don’t, making it a tedious process to go through every individual chapter and determine what got introduced at what point. As Artusi continues to develop, I hope to see these different offerings better integrate with each other.

Coordinating Music Theory and Aural Skills

Remembering back to my undergraduate music theory classes, our written theory and aural skills curriculum was not always aligned. Only by the time we reached atonal theory did the written and aural skills component line up. Coordinating between written and aural skills is one of theory’s pedagogical challenges, and isn’t necessarily Artusi’s fault.

Overall, the abundance of options, matched with design flexibility is a hugely positive aspect of Artusi. Having a Canvas-like platform that is purpose-built for music is an enormous asset to educators. The ability to easily export grades integrates well with other course tracking software that your department might use. Interactive drills enable additional practice opportunities, increasing equity and accessibility for students without access to pianos and/or a dedicated practice space.

Room For Growth

Artusi is not a perfect product, and continues to evolve and expand its offerings. Overall, I think it’s a fantastic and affordable tool that  brings the music theory textbook into the 21st century. It is approachable, adaptable, and gives students an extremely wide range of activities they can work on independently.

Increased Gamification

In my courses, I use Artusi to incentivize practice. I link each lecture and textbook chapter to a corresponding drill, all with scalable difficulty levels. Achieving “fluency” (answering a number of questions correctly in a row) gives students extra credit. In a 10-week course, achieving fluency on 40 drills gives students the equivalent make-up for a graded quiz. This gamification of participation gives students a hands-on way to see improvement.

There are a lot more opportunities for gamification that could take Artusi to the next level. It would be interesting to see Artusi incorporate more dynamic flexibility. For example, if a student is completing a textbook chapter on triads and keeps making a certain mistake, it could make a note of that and adapt the next review chapter. Right now, the pre-built courses have lots of review sections that make the assignments sometimes overly tedious.

The current limitations of Artusi are evident in some of the language the pre-written materials have. For example, a review section assumes the student did well and says “great job!” (find this and use a screenshot in the article), even if the actual student did poorly. Instead of asking students to spell a major triad 20 times, what if it asked it only 8 times. After 8 correct answers, the system would know the student has already gained fluency in this skill. Perhaps the fluency mechanic in the drills could be more closely incorporated with the textbook materials.

Better MIDI Playback

There currently are no controls for altering the synthesized sounds. Once you activate the audio engine (in a pop-up whenever a page is opened that plays a tritone), there is no further control over what you hear. A more advanced audio engine would make for much more engaging audio content. Being able to select from a bank of synthesized sounds would be a useful tool.

Alternative Navigation

Assignments in Artusi are scrolled through vertically like a typical webpage. Meanwhile, drills are shown on a single page in a more gamified interface. I am eager to see Artusi explore alternative navigation formats for its core course content. Increasing design complexity does create some additional logistical challenges, but I personally believe there is more space to explore here.

Sandbox/Exploration Mode

There are different approaches to incentivizing more freeform exploration. Sandboxes can be used as teaching tools (e.g., Artinfuser as a counterpoint visualizer), or for practicing materials outside of class.

As discussed earlier, Artusi’s drills have pre-defined levels that can be connected to textbook/worksheet chapters. However, from what I can tell, students can’t create their own drills on the go or modify existing ones, so the individual exercises can sometimes feel a bit locked.

ToneSavvy (see screenshot) is an example of a different online music theory platform, displaying exercise parameters in an easy-to-use on-screen environment. In the screenshot here, you can see how ToneSavvy gives users more control to create their own exercises.

It’s important to note that while ToneSavvy has a lot of great music theory and ear training exercises, it doesn’t specialize in teaching those materials. This is where Artusi really shines: it is a unified platform for learning music theory and aural skills, and also practicing those skills.

Conclusion

There’s a lot I’ve learned about pedagogy and technology through my exploration of Artusi. As an outside looking in, my commentary on this piece of is ignorant of the day to day considerations that exist within a tech company. Overall, it has tangibly increased the joy I get when teaching by offloading many of the repetitive tasks associated with teaching theory. It has resulted in increased student satisfaction, engagement, and progress. I am very much looking forward to seeing where this platform goes next. The folks at Artusi also happen to be extremely kind people, so check them out, I’m sure they’d love to chat!

Sasha Ishov
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