MILWAUKEE, 5/18/22 -- Hal Leonard has announced that this fall, SoundCheck™ will be included in Essential Elements Interactive at no additional charge to students using Essential Elements method books. This makes Essential Elements the only band and string method with included performance assessment technology.

Powered by MatchMySound™, a proven leader in assessment technology, SoundCheck provides ratings and feedback on pitch, rhythm, and intonation, and supports both audio and video recording assessments. Students and teachers will be able to access SoundCheck in their Essential Elements Interactive account and easily create assessment assignments, apply their own self-evaluation rubrics, and turn them into the EEi grade book.

“SoundCheck assessment has proven to be a valuable tool for learning to play music,” says John Mlynczak, Vice President, Music Education & Technology, Hal Leonard. “Integrating this technology into Essential Elements Interactive allows us to offer the most comprehensive collection of included resources for learning to play an instrument.”

“All of us at MatchMySound are thrilled that our assessment and guided practice technology used to power SoundCheck will be part of the Essential Element Interactive experience,” added David Smolover, CEO of Accelerando, LLC. “We have long admired Essential Elements as the leading and most innovative instrumental method on the market.”

SoundCheck will be included for all Essential Elements Interactive users this fall.

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About Hal Leonard

Founded in 1947, Hal Leonard is the world’s largest music print publisher and digital content provider, producing educational publications, songbooks, sheet music, reference books, DVDs, magazines, eBooks, digital sheet music, apps and more. The company is also a major distributor of music technology products, selling and marketing the most popular software, hard goods and accessories available today, to musicians and recording enthusiasts around the world. In its more than one million available publications and products, Hal Leonard represents many of the world’s best known and most respected publishers, artists, songwriters, arrangers and manufacturers. The company is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI and also has domestic offices in Winona, MN; San Francisco; Austin; and Boston, and offices abroad in Australia, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.halleonard.com.

About Essential Elements

Essential Elements is the bestselling method for middle school and high school band and orchestras. First published in 1991, the band series was written by renowned educators Tim Lautzenheiser, John Higgins, Charles Menghini, Paul Lavender, Tom C. Rhodes, and Don Bierschenk. The strings series was written by Michael Allen, Robert Gillespie, and Pamela Tellejohn Hayes. The series features Essential Elements Interactive which provides a valuable online resource center for teachers, students, and parents. 

About Accelerando

Accelerando is a music education company that specializes in music assessment technology. Its flagship practice and feedback technology, MatchMySound, powers the apps SoundCheck, Achieve Music, Dohrey.me, MusicFirst’s PracticeFirst, Piano Adventures’ Sightreading Coach, My Choral Coach, and Marching Band Pro. Accelerando also works with School of Rock, one of the world’s largest music lesson providers. The company recently developed Songley, an app that is transforming the relationship between performing artists and their fans. The company’s mission is to make learning fun, exciting, and affordable, and proudly serves its solutions to publishers, schools, private teachers, student musicians, and hobbyists worldwide.