Here are a few terms you will need to know. They are used in MusicGoals Rhythm to describe components of the program and student activities.
Activity
There are four activities in MusicGoals Rhythm: Play Along, Repeat After, Reading, and Dictation.
Course
A course is a set of related objectives assembled to offer a logical sequence and balance of lessons. It is a pre-planned curriculum that you complete with the aid of MusicGoals.
Drill
This is the basic building block of all MusicGoals activities. A drill is one rhythm example. MusicGoals displays your score for each drill in the Score Continue box.
Objective
An objective is a graduated and sequenced group of drills that pertain to one class of time signatures (a rhythm classification) and one activity, for example, Binary/Binary Reading. This objective consists of steps with time signatures such as 4/4, 2/4, 2/2. Each step consists of one time signature, a set of rhythm patterns, and a number of drills to master these patterns.
A rhythm class is a family of related time signatures. They are related by the number of pulses per measure and by the number of subdivisions per pulse. MusicGoals Rhythm uses the following terms to group objectives into families of time signatures:
Binary/Binary - Time Signatures where both the counts per measure and subdivisions are multiples of 2, for example, 4/4, 2/4, 2/2.
Ternary/Binary - Time Signatures where the primary division is by 3 and the subdivisions are by 2, for example, 3/4, 3/2.
Binary/Ternary - Time Signatures where the primary division is by 2 and the subdivision is by 3, for example, 6/8.
Ternary/Ternary - Time Signatures where both the primary and subdivisions are by 3, for example 9/8.
5/Binary - Time signatures of 5/4, 5/8
7/Binary - Time signatures of 7/4, 7/8
Preliminary - This group of drills contains a variety of time signatures. They are one and two measure drills that provide additional practice.
Extra - This group includes triplets and binary combined and other complex meters.
see also Time Signatures
Routine
A routine is a cycle of objectives determined by a rhythm course or by the user. There are four routines: 1) Rhythm Courses, 2) Expanded Courses, 3) Set Goals from List, 4) Practice Routine. The quickest way to start your training with MusicGoals is to select a predefined course routine. Click GOTO - Next Goal, F6 and automatically advance when drills are mastered. Set Goals from List lets you create your own routine by selecting objectives and setting drill levels to reach. Practice Routine lets you mix and match custom drills and skip to any drill level. You can freely move between Routines without affecting your progress or custom settings. see also Pick Routine, Course Lists
Step
A set of drills within an objective. A step consists of one time signature and a subset of rhythmic values and patterns.
see also Note Values, Time Signatures, and the Glossary for music theory