MUSIC APP – Coach’s Eye: An App for Musicians Too! by Jonathan Moody

MUSIC APP – Coach’s Eye: An App for Musicians Too! by Jonathan Moody… I am a big fan of my iPhone, I’ll admit it. There are a lot of reasons why I sing its accolades but generally speaking, I am excited with what mobile technology (as a whole) has done for the musician. I have all of my iProducts full of audio recording apps, sheet music apps, tuning apps, and a bunch of synth apps which annoy my wife to no end. It’s safe to say that I’m always looking at what new things are coming out that I can snatch up for a buck and make my gigging life easier.

Enter Coach’s Eye, by Techsmith. Initially geared towards athletes, this app is designed for the coach to help train and improve their athletes by something we’ve secretly wanted for years; the instant replay. By using the camera, coaches can tape an athlete’s movement, and replay it back, notating and making comments over it. From there, you can immediately share it with the athlete, thus making more powerful corrections (because you can actually SEE what you’re doing) as well as saving it and uploading it to them via a number of options.

Imagine what we, as musicians, could do with the Coach’s Eye program.

Much like athletes, what musicians strive to perfect is proper technique. In a private lesson setting, using Coach’s Eye in the same intended manner would be easy to implement and yield immediate results, keeping the student from becoming frustrated and allowing the teacher to provide feedback that the student can see. And by sharing the video (either on the Coach’s Eye site or one of their other options), you could provide the student with a reference to review while they are practicing at home.

This works in the opposite way as well. Using the front camera on your iDevice (it’s a universal app that looks great on the ‘phone or ‘pad), you can record yourself practicing, working on a tough challenge and use Coach’s Eye to go back and assess how you did, using the flywheel in the program to slow down sections, repeat them and make notes to allow for greater learning. Better still is that you can save the initial video, share it with other people who have CE who can then import it into the program and give you feedback via long distance.

So practical application aside, how does Coach’s Eye work?

Simply put, very well. Within five minutes, I had a video recorded in the app and was ready to go back over it and add annotations. There is a tutorial available in the beginning of the app as well as some great stuff in the internet but seriously, the program is extremely simple and intuitive to use so I’d almost recommend you jump right in and
have some fun.

Because sound is so imperative to us musicians, I talked with the staff of Coach’s Eye, and bounced some ideas back and forth on how we could achieve audio quality that matched the video. With some ideas in hand, we met up and recorded a quick video to help you hear the differences that can be had with the right adaptor.

Coach’s Eye by Techsmith is an extremely easy-to-use app that provides a lot more than what you’d expect from the $4.99 pricetag. Combine that with some of the best, most exciting customer service that I’ve ever dealt with (in phone and in person), and it’s a completely awesome experience, all around. Initially only available for iDevices, it has just recently been released on the Android platform to world-wide acclaim.

Visit for more information on the MUSIC APP, Coach’s Eye