Essential Elements offers beginning students sound pedagogy and engaging music, all carefully paced to successfully start young players on their musical journey. It features both familiar songs and specially designed exercises, created and arranged for the classroom in a unison-learning environment, as well as instrument-specific exercises to focus each student on the unique characteristics of their own instrument. Essential Elements provides both teachers and students with a wealth of materials to develop total musicianship, even at the beginning stages. Features: Same great Essential Elements 2000 method! 15-minute video/“super lesson” for learning the basics Play-along mp3* tracks for all 185 exercises (featuring a professional player on your instrument) Tempo Adjustment Software Duets and Trios Music Listening Library SmartMusic® Software for Exercises 1-100 (for use on PC/Mac) - practice, record, and email a performance with on-screen assessment Essential Elements now includes Essential Elements Interactive (EEi), the ultimate online music education resource. EEi introduces the first-ever, easy set of technology tools for online teaching, learning, assessment, and communication... ideal for teaching today's beginning band and string students, both in the classroom and at home. For more information, visit Hal Leonard Online - Essential Elements Interactive.