Customer Reviews

Groovy Shapes Single User

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a huge Sibelius fan, so when they came out with educational software for young children, and when I saw a demo of this, I had to get a copy for my nephews, ages 7 and 3. Both of them took to this program like I never expected they would. I got a call from my sister-in-law a few days after I delivered the software, and she was shocked, saying she couldn't get the kids off of the computer! (Finally... something got them away from the X-Box!) The greatest thing about this program is that it's equal learning and fun. It teaches the basic musical concepts in ways I never thought of, but ways in which today's technologically-savvy kids can relate and enjoy. I have to admit, I had WAY too much fun playing with it myself! It's sophisticated enough for adults to enjoy, but simple enough for kids to understand. I heard great things about this program on a television review ~ it was a first-place choice for children in a study of educational music software. Very cool, very fun, very educational. A great way to get your children started in music!!

I am an elementary music teacher and our school bought the entire series of Groovy Music for our computer lab. My students have done so well with it and enjoyed it so much, I bought it for my 5 year old niece. It's very user friendly and kids find it very entertaining. The Create portion of the software is awesome for beginning "composers." I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to encourage the exploration of music in a 5-7 yr old they know.

This program will not run on Window 7 out of the box. I went to Sibelius's web site and they had this to say:

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The three products in the Sibelius Groovy Music range -- Groovy Shapes, Groovy Jungle and Groovy City -- all rely on Adobe/Macromedia Director technology, which is currently incompatible with Windows Vista.

When you run one of the Groovy products on Windows, you will see a message that informs you Macromedia Projector has stopped working, and Groovy will not run.

To solve this, you can run Groovy in compatibility mode:

*Click the Start button
*Select Computer from the menu to see your computer's disk drives
*Navigate to C:\Program Files\Sibelius Software\Groovy Shapes (or Groovy Jungle or Groovy City)
*Right-click the Groovy application icon and select Properties from the context menu
*In the dialog that appears, choose the Compatibility tab, switch on Run this program in compatibility mode for: checkbox and select Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5) from the drop-down list
*NOTE: If Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5) doesn't work try the Windows XP (Service Pack 2) option.
*Click OK
Now run Groovy Music as normal from its icon in the Start menu. You only need to do the above procedure the first time you run Groovy Music -- thereafter you can simply run the program each time from its icon in the Start menu.
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Their solution works up to a point in Windows 7 (I have no idea if this works in Vista). The program does in fact run, but the sound slowly degrades until it's too distorted to use the program. My kids get about 10 minutes of play. From the little play time we've gotten it looks like an interesting product but for me at least it is not worth the trouble.

My son is loving this. He especially likes being rewarded with the bonus shapes every so often. Really well done. As a professional composer and user of Sibelius, I'm very happy to recommend this product. It certainly saves me thinking of how to explain certain things.

The fact that this company is still selling the product without a fix for working in Windows 7 is probably a sign about about the quality of the product itself. I followed all the suggested "fixes" including running the latest Quicktime in the backround and the sound still slowly degrades to the point of being unusable. I called Sibelius (which is a project in itself to get through to someone without having to pay) and their answer is that they don't have a fix, sorry. Next time I'll read the reviews before purchasing. :)