Features

A Solo and Ensemble contest event can be as small as a single school or as large as an entire district with dozens of participating schools. Every school that participates in a contest that uses Solo-Ensemble.com will receive their own customized Main Menu for each contest, with a single login identity (see the image below). All persons added to a School Staff have identical privileges within the School area of a contest.

From this Main Menu the teacher or band director can add, remove, edit, and view their student performances, review the judging results for an ongoing or completed contest, download comment sheets, invoices, files, or view messages from the contest staff.

Every School can view the time blocks and rooms to which they have been assigned by the Contest Staff. In Solo-Ensemble.com these time blocks are called Sessions. Each Session can have many items assigned to it, such as a Room Number, a School, one or more Judges, Accompanists, or Contest Staff, or even general resources such as student volunteers or specialized equipment (such as a Marimba).

The Contest Staff for a Solo and Ensemble contest (or related event) has a comprehensive Main Menu (see image below) from which they can manage all aspects of a contest event. The actions are divided into logical groups for pre-contest setup, school and personnel management, and contest management for the day(s) of the event. All users of Solo-Ensemble.com have a Main Menu with a similar structure but different functions according to their role (Contest Staff, School Staff, Judges, Accompanists).

Contest Staff can create and manage scheduling time blocks called Sessions. Each Session can have many items assigned to it, such as a Room Number, a School, one or more Judges, Accompanists, or Contest Staff, or even general resources such as student volunteers or specialized equipment (such as a Marimba).

Every Contest Judge that participates in a contest that uses Solo-Ensemble.com will receive their own customized Main Menu for each contest, with a single login identity (see the image below). All users of Solo-Ensemble.com have a Main Menu with a similar structure but different functions according to their role (Contest Staff, School Staff, Judges, Accompanists).

From this Main Menu they can submit a performance entry ID for evaluation, view, sort, and filter all scheduled performances to select one to judge, review their previous scores, and even edit previous scores within the last few minutes (as determined by the Contest Host).

Every Judge can view the time blocks and rooms to which they have been assigned by the Contest Staff. In Solo-Ensemble.com these time blocks are called Sessions. Each Session can have many items assigned to it, such as a Room Number, a School, one or more Judges, Accompanists, or Contest Staff, or even general resources such as student volunteers or specialized equipment (such as a Marimba).

Particularly useful to high school programs that intend to evaluate incoming students, the Placement Audition capability of Solo-Ensemble.com allows the Contest Staff to set up scoring criteria (rubrics) with specific numeric weights for a student performance. A panel of judges may then evaluate each student against these criteria, and the resulting scores can be viewed by the Contest Staff.

An optional capability is for different schools to select alternate scoring criteria; this would be useful for example if 6th, 7th, and 8th graders were all being evaluated in a single event. The rubrics for each grade could be set up differently because the skill sets vary considerably across those grade levels.

Judged comment sheets are a critical element of any Solo and Ensemble (or similar) contest. Since all of the results from judged performances are stored in a database, this information can be retrieved in many ways. The comment sheets are provided as Adobe Acrobat .pdf files, which may be viewed online, downloaded, or printed directly from your browser. See the example comment sheet below (and note the contest school logo may be included).

Using Solo-Ensemble.com, a Contest Judge can download all of the comment sheets that he or she has authored (but not those from other Judges). A Participating School can download the comment sheets for their own students (but not those from other Schools). The Contest Staff can download any or all comment sheets, either individually, in groups, or for a particular School or Judge.

Contest Judges especially like Solo-Ensemble.com because much of the data entry has already been done before they ever meet their student performers. By having the music teachers enter their own students’ data, the judge is able to focus on the performance, entering their comments, and deciding the overall score.

Each contest may select custom judging rubrics for Solo and for Ensemble performances (and these may be distinct).

An image of a typical Ensemble Evaluation Form is shown below, with a single comment area. The (dismissable) information bar at the bottom of the Comment Area describes the definition of the rubric.

Contest Judges especially like Solo-Ensemble.com because much of the data entry has already been done before they ever meet their student performers. By having the music teachers enter their own students’ data, the judge is able to focus on the performance, entering their comments, and deciding the overall score.

Each contest may select custom judging rubrics for Solo performances (and these may be distinct from the Ensemble performances – see the Ensemble Evaluation Form).

An image of a typical Solo Evaluation Form is shown below, with three custom rubrics: Tone, Technique, and Musicianship. The (dismissable) information bar at the bottom of the Comment Area describes the definition of the rubric.

The tab labeled My Notes is a text scratchpad in which Judges may keep common phrases they can copy and paste into their evaluations. For example, “Thank you for dressing nicely today.” or “I can see you have practiced hard on this piece.”

Contest participants (currently Participating Schools, Judges, Accompanists, and Contest Staff) create a one-time login account with Solo-Ensemble.com. Each participant then has a customized web page (called a Dashboard) from which they can access any contest with which they are associated. Switching between Contests is as easy as returning to your Dashboard and choosing a different contest.

When invited to participate in a contest, each role has a unique 5-character code that is provided by the Contest Director (or any of the Contest Staff members). From their Dashboard page, a Solo-Ensemble.com Member may type in the code and become associated to the contest with a particular role. Members may belong to several contests, and it is possible to have multiple roles within the same contest (see example below).

The buttons with icons are clickable links and indicate that the current member can enter the listed contests in those specific roles. If a member is not associated with a contest event in any role, then the contest name does not appear on their Dashboard.