Tomplay Review: Why I love this interactive sheet music app!

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Tomplay is an interactive sheet music app I’ve been using for several months (as have several of my online students!), and I want to share the reasons I love Tomplay.

First and foremost, Tomplay is fun! I want to emphasize the word interactive in the title. Being a musician can sometimes feel isolating or lonely if you don’t have other musicians to play with. Tomplay allows you to perform with interactive accompaniment, which can make practicing feel like less of a chore and more like a performance. I’ve really enjoyed the backing tracks to play along with some of my favorite clarinet works, such as Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata or Weber’s Concerto No. 1 in f minor.

Here are some other reasons I love Tomplay:

Huge variety of clarinet music. With over 100,000 scores on Tomplay, there are loads of works for clarinet in all styles and difficulty levels. You can find standard works from Mozart, Brahms, Weber, and more, and you can also play popular songs, such as film music, jazz, pop, and other genres.
Suitable for absolute beginners to professionals. Even if you’re picking up the clarinet for the very first time, there are easy tunes to play (which include the clarinet fingerings – more on that below). There is truly music for every age and ability level, and I personally use Tomplay to review and practice standard clarinet repertoire.
Built-in clarinet fingerings. Not sure how to play a particular note? You can click on individual notes to see the corresponding clarinet fingering!
Wonderful for learning accompaniment to standard works. I’ve been using Tomplay as an interactive score-study tool because it allows me to change the tempo, change the accompaniment volume, and even mute lines in chamber music. (This has been particularly useful as I work on the Brahms Clarinet Quintet so I can better hear how each individual line interacts with the clarinet.)
Wide variety of warm-up exercises and pedagogical materials. TomScales and warm-ups include a large number of skill-building exercises with backing tracks. One of my favorite discoveries on Tomplay is an arrangement of my beloved Jeanjean Vade-Mecum for two clarinets – perfect to play along with your teacher or student!
Scrolling score and moving cursor makes it easy to follow along. This is especially useful when you’re learning new works and working through tricky rhythms.
You can hear recordings of every piece (solo and accompaniment). If you aren’t sure how the music should sound, you can listen to the recording and even mute or adjust the volume for both clarinet and accompaniment.
There are tons of arrangements for clarinet. Have you ever wished you could play popular songs on clarinet but can’t find the music? Tomplay has a great selection of arrangements, such as Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose, Star Wars, and many more.
Built-in practice tools like metronome, looping, and wait mode. You can select a particular section to loop (repeat several times with the metronome) at any tempo you set with the metronome. Wait mode waits for you to play the correct note before moving on to the next one.
Built-in recording tools. Whether you’re recording yourself to listen back or to share online, Tomplay allows you to record audio and video, with or without the moving score visible.
Portability of sheet music. Having moved A LOT, I appreciate that I can access my Tomplay sheet music library in one place. This is incredibly useful when I’m working on several pieces of music and don’t want to carry everything with me.

I encourage you to try out Tomplay and explore all of these amazing features! You can purchase individual scores or sign up for an annual subscription. Either way, I think this is a valuable performance and practice tool for clarinetists of all ages and ability levels, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do :)