I tried it, I guess I'm your target market, I'm relatively new to keyboard, trying to learn, and do happen to have a Bluetooth MIDI adapter.
A few notes and observations from a quick trial run below:
- the app crashed out a few times when connecting to my MIDI controller (a Yamaha MD-BT01 dongle that plugs into the old school MIDI plugs on the keyboard). Not sure what's going on there, but it happened a few times.
- the feedback given seemed quite helpful, I like that wrong notes were highlighted, and it seemed to do well at ignoring a false-start that I made while trying it out.
- I would have liked if the playback functionality supported MIDI too; I play with headphones on and it's a bit weird (and annoying for other people in the house) if the playback comes out of the iPad.
- I would also like the ability to start from a bar of my choice and maybe even evaluate a one or two bar section at a time rather than having to play the whole piece
On the whole though I think it's a good app, and I intend to use it more. I don't share the concerns of others about the price of the sheet music, I think your pricing is reasonable, and assume it takes some effort for you to translate into a form that can be used.
This is such a fundamental feature that is glaringly absent from so much (most?) music-instruction software. I don't want to know only that I missed some of the notes; I want to see WTF I actually played, so I can adjust accordingly!
Thank you for the feedback. The crashes should be fixed in the 1.0.2 update rolling out today. If you have any additional feedback as you use the app more, please email us.
>I would also like the ability to start from a bar of my choice and maybe even evaluate a one or two bar section at a time rather than having to play the whole piece
For reference "Hanon" is a classic book of piano exercises that improve the velocity of the pianist. It is like 150 years old but still heavily used everyday by a lot of professional pianists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_in_60_E...
That's not strong opposition there. One basically says it's boring, and the other says that only a certain technique can ever be good, and then it isn't even cited.
I've been paying for Piano Marvel for a few years, and there is tons of room for improvement in this space:
- Native, non-janky app. Ideally cross-platform.
- More inspiring music in lessons.
- Recommendation algorithm for what piece/lesson to practice next.
- More methods of measuring progress over time.
- Spaced repetition for sight reading, technique, scales, ear training, sections of known pieces.
- Splitting pieces automatically into overlapping sections to practice, RH, LH and hands together (whatever makes sense).
- Simple streaming/recording features for use with piano lessons over video chat (screen/video/audio mixed together to a single stream?).
- Show music theory concepts based on what you are playing, in the context of the current piece. E.g. what chord is being played, and its function. Possible continuations.
My setup is a Macbook + FP-30 + USB midi cable. Having the laptop standing on top of the piano makes keyboard and touch pad usage clunky, so navigation must be simple. Also uploading custom scores is a must for me.
Im missing one thing though. Highlight of an app is that it can analyze play from MIDI but being an interested person it immediately pushes me toward “pick a device” which is immediate ehhhh area for myself.
I know there are many and there’s personal preferences etc. but I think that (since it’s an educational system) there should be kickstart process accessible, i.e. matrix of recommended devices and peripherals (size/price).
Studio Logic has a good range of MIDI controllers [1] [2], some of which include built-in audio synthesis, and others just the controller. I think they are very competitive in terms of price. I have a SL88 and the thing is definitely built to last and feels like a real piano keyboard.
Came to ask exactly the same thing. Want to buy one for my kids to practice but I don't have an idea which would be the best given our budget and preferences so a matrix of compatible devices would be great.
Just did research into this question...I'm someone that played piano as a child and wanted to get back into it. I wanted to get something that would integrate with apps, good action and sound without making a massive investment in case I don't stick with it. I also wanted something that was small and easy to move.
My digital piano just arrived a few hours ago.
I decided on the Roland FP-30X after trying several models in store.
Pro-tip: many of the big name digital pianos are half the price in the mainland China market than in the rest of the world. Often for an upgraded model as well.
FP-30X was 3850 CNY (~US$550) including the Roland KPD-70 three pedal unit and KSC-70 stand. Delivery (to Hong Kong) was ~400 CNY.
Another good option is the FP-18 which is a mainland market-only China model that's an upgrade overthe FP-10 in that it has more sounds and also supports three pedals. It's about ~1200 CNY cheaper than the FP-30X. Downside is slightly inferior sound and speakers compared to FP-30x
I also tried out the Yamaha portables...P-525 was excellent but about 3x the cost of the FP-30x. I didn't really like feel of the action of the cheaper Yamaha (P-225?).
So far FP-30X has been great...the bluetooth MIDI interface and bluetooth interfaces work seamlessly with my iPad. I haven't tried out Hanon Pro yet but it's been really thrilling to try out the various piano learning apps. If I had these back in the 90s, I'd probably be a much better piano player now! Better late than never!
If you want kids to be excited about playing the piano, get a keyboard with light keys like the Yamaha EZ-300.
Combined with a learning software that can control the light (Synthesia, or the one from Yamaha itself, maybe also the one in the original post), it creates a huge amount of fun and motivation. Also works very well for adults.
Keyboards like this do not give you proper hammer-action piano keys, but it makes you discover you /want/ to be a pianist, cheaper and with fun.
(There are also a few hammer-action lit digital pianos but they aren't as fun, and already quite expensive.)
I think it's actually difficult to find a keyboard that does not do USB midi nowadays. What's more important is what keys and keybed you want, it's about being able to comfortably play on the thing, that has not much to do with this app (as at least USB midi is quite universal now, as stated)
I’ve been working on it full-time for nearly 12 years now.
It doesn’t do the “listen to your performance” thing — maybe someday. But the other bits, such as practice tracking and interactive sheet music features, are all there.
I’m a beginner on piano/keyboard - been playing daily for a couple of years and I think this would be a great app for me to push myself. However, I mostly play kids songs when my kids are going to sleep and they are mostly Danish.
Would love to see a way to import sheets from my already purchased books.
I realize you earn money for the content but I would happily pay hundred dollars or more for the app if it could just import my existing sheets
I’m a father of two children, a nine and two year old, and none of us know how to play piano. I did play a woodwind for five years in and out of school, and did extracurricular music for many years - even from a young age.
Now, I’d like my son to learn piano as his first instrument. I imagine the theory and complexity of chords thrust on the pianist must be a good foundation for music in general - certainly I’m fine with my kids departures to any other instrument and mastery isn’t itself the goal.
Is this app the right tool? It doesn’t explicitly market to this segment. However, there are a number of other apps out there I’ve considered as well, including PianoMarvel mentioned elsewhere.
Surely, 1:1 lessons will be recommended - and I imagine they have their place - but I’d prefer to lean a bit harder into self-guided / app-guided and augment with a human tutor as necessary. My experience was that my tutored sessions were a bit wasteful (I wasn’t a disciplined student, and certainly wasted a lot of time and money).
My ideal setup is either an iMac or iPad and an electric piano.
I had a goal of introducing my kids to piano, and also wanted to pick it back up myself (I'd been forced to as a kid and hated it, never progressed beyond beginner).
I got myself a casio privia (it's a costco special 88 weighted keys, was the reddit recommendation for beginners at the time). Then paid for lessons with a teacher for my family which by far outweighed the cost of the keyboard.
About 10 years later: rest of family have given up piano, they didn't progress far, and i didn't do any forcing; but it was nice to hear them play when they did. I've kept it up although progress is very slow.
I think my feelings are:
- I could have spent more on the piano (my dad got a significantly more expensive piano, and it is more pleasurable to play): quieter keys, better action on the keys.
- I feel pretty good about how far my the rest of my family progressed, and am happy that i didn't push
- I feel like a teacher somewhat forces you to keep practising even when you don't want, and maintains some progress, I don't think I'd get this from an app.
The teacher isn’t there to teach - you could do that on your own with enough time and energy. The teacher is there to preserve your passion by making sure you don’t get bogged down in easily-fixable troughs. They will hopefully have knowledge of music such that you’re always excited to play something new rather than feeling like you have to dig through a composer’s works to find something worthwhile. They provide accountability for your practice and validation for when you do well.
Ideally, you should use yourself as a guinea pig to test out the teachers in your city to find one that’s best for your kids. In reality, dumping your two-year-old on your wife to do that sucks for both of you. Your local music shop can help steer you away from teachers with bad reputations in your city.
This guy has thorough answers to questions no one wants to ask (e.g. Are my hands too small? What if I’m playing for others and I forget how the piece goes? Why does improvisation feel impossible to understand? How long should I practice? Should my hands hurt?).
The FAQ on the music theory Reddit has answers to questions that are largely impossible to find elsewhere. “What are modes?” is one of those questions.
In nearly any instrument it's very important to get the technique right from the start. It's incredibly easy to catch bad habits which then are much more difficult to unlearn, and will make your progress much slower and frustrating. So actually it's the other way around: pay a teacher to help him start, correct his posture/technique/etc, then later on you can wean off and continue on your own :)
I've definitely thought about how one goes about coding an intelligent agent that can identify what you're playing and the make accurate guesses about where in the piece you're playing.
The player could make mistakes as well, which means any intelligent algorithm would need to apply some degree of probabilistic calculations to find the most likely point.
Very often, when practising, you'd constantly repeat passages multiple times. And certain passages may also be exactly the same in different parts of the piece as well.
To me it sounds like a incredibly difficult problem to solve. Not sure if the recent AI advances change anything.
There are multiple parts to this problem, but it seems quite doable.
Shazam can do generic look-up of music since around 2003, see for example this page on abracadabra [1].
I'd guess that if you limit things to a piano, one could relatively easily find the notes being played with some Fourier magic, and then solve a Hidden Markov Model to find the most plausible position in the music. Using a MIDI interface makes it even simpler.
Readit News
A few notes and observations from a quick trial run below:
- the app crashed out a few times when connecting to my MIDI controller (a Yamaha MD-BT01 dongle that plugs into the old school MIDI plugs on the keyboard). Not sure what's going on there, but it happened a few times. - the feedback given seemed quite helpful, I like that wrong notes were highlighted, and it seemed to do well at ignoring a false-start that I made while trying it out. - I would have liked if the playback functionality supported MIDI too; I play with headphones on and it's a bit weird (and annoying for other people in the house) if the playback comes out of the iPad. - I would also like the ability to start from a bar of my choice and maybe even evaluate a one or two bar section at a time rather than having to play the whole piece
On the whole though I think it's a good app, and I intend to use it more. I don't share the concerns of others about the price of the sheet music, I think your pricing is reasonable, and assume it takes some effort for you to translate into a form that can be used.
Well done, thanks for sharing.
This is such a fundamental feature that is glaringly absent from so much (most?) music-instruction software. I don't want to know only that I missed some of the notes; I want to see WTF I actually played, so I can adjust accordingly!
^ IMO this should be among your top priority.
Deleted Comment
I've been paying for Piano Marvel for a few years, and there is tons of room for improvement in this space:
- Native, non-janky app. Ideally cross-platform.
- More inspiring music in lessons.
- Recommendation algorithm for what piece/lesson to practice next.
- More methods of measuring progress over time.
- Spaced repetition for sight reading, technique, scales, ear training, sections of known pieces.
- Splitting pieces automatically into overlapping sections to practice, RH, LH and hands together (whatever makes sense).
- Simple streaming/recording features for use with piano lessons over video chat (screen/video/audio mixed together to a single stream?).
- Show music theory concepts based on what you are playing, in the context of the current piece. E.g. what chord is being played, and its function. Possible continuations.
My setup is a Macbook + FP-30 + USB midi cable. Having the laptop standing on top of the piano makes keyboard and touch pad usage clunky, so navigation must be simple. Also uploading custom scores is a must for me.
https://www.pianojacq.com/
(open source, from jacquesm here)
Im missing one thing though. Highlight of an app is that it can analyze play from MIDI but being an interested person it immediately pushes me toward “pick a device” which is immediate ehhhh area for myself.
I know there are many and there’s personal preferences etc. but I think that (since it’s an educational system) there should be kickstart process accessible, i.e. matrix of recommended devices and peripherals (size/price).
--
1: https://studiologic-music.com/products/
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar
I researched that for my sister for instance, and found that this series https://www.thomann.co.uk/kawai_es_120_b.htm is a very good compromise (for < 600€).
I consider it is best, though, to try it out a bit at a store to make your own opinion first!
Too low a price -> the pleasure experienced is lower, not flattering and discouraging to the player. But you do not need 1k€ here either now.
My digital piano just arrived a few hours ago.
I decided on the Roland FP-30X after trying several models in store.
Pro-tip: many of the big name digital pianos are half the price in the mainland China market than in the rest of the world. Often for an upgraded model as well.
FP-30X was 3850 CNY (~US$550) including the Roland KPD-70 three pedal unit and KSC-70 stand. Delivery (to Hong Kong) was ~400 CNY.
Another good option is the FP-18 which is a mainland market-only China model that's an upgrade overthe FP-10 in that it has more sounds and also supports three pedals. It's about ~1200 CNY cheaper than the FP-30X. Downside is slightly inferior sound and speakers compared to FP-30x
I also tried out the Yamaha portables...P-525 was excellent but about 3x the cost of the FP-30x. I didn't really like feel of the action of the cheaper Yamaha (P-225?).
So far FP-30X has been great...the bluetooth MIDI interface and bluetooth interfaces work seamlessly with my iPad. I haven't tried out Hanon Pro yet but it's been really thrilling to try out the various piano learning apps. If I had these back in the 90s, I'd probably be a much better piano player now! Better late than never!
Combined with a learning software that can control the light (Synthesia, or the one from Yamaha itself, maybe also the one in the original post), it creates a huge amount of fun and motivation. Also works very well for adults.
Keyboards like this do not give you proper hammer-action piano keys, but it makes you discover you /want/ to be a pianist, cheaper and with fun.
(There are also a few hammer-action lit digital pianos but they aren't as fun, and already quite expensive.)
Also consider Synthesia's short list: https://synthesiagame.com/keyboards/info
(I'd get the EZ-300 over the PSR-EW310 listed there for that price class, I believe it didn't exist when that list was written.)
Pop in songs they like (e.g. Disney or Pokemon) from a MuseScore subscription for engagement optimisation ;-)
Dead Comment
https://www.soundslice.com/
I’ve been working on it full-time for nearly 12 years now.
It doesn’t do the “listen to your performance” thing — maybe someday. But the other bits, such as practice tracking and interactive sheet music features, are all there.
I thought I'll have to dev something myself.
But I googled and discovered SoundSlice.
My practice technique has changed, I'm learning superfast thanks to SoundSlice. I play it on a tablet I've got a tripod in my playing area.
It's awesome to see the creator here, I didn't know that it's been going on since 12 years.
And I learnt that you're the co-creator of Django as well, it's cool to have the product from an indie dev vs an (enshittification loving) corp.
Just wanted to say thanks for your great work, your app has really made it much easier for me to learn faster tracks!
Would love to see a way to import sheets from my already purchased books.
I realize you earn money for the content but I would happily pay hundred dollars or more for the app if it could just import my existing sheets
Now, I’d like my son to learn piano as his first instrument. I imagine the theory and complexity of chords thrust on the pianist must be a good foundation for music in general - certainly I’m fine with my kids departures to any other instrument and mastery isn’t itself the goal.
Is this app the right tool? It doesn’t explicitly market to this segment. However, there are a number of other apps out there I’ve considered as well, including PianoMarvel mentioned elsewhere.
Surely, 1:1 lessons will be recommended - and I imagine they have their place - but I’d prefer to lean a bit harder into self-guided / app-guided and augment with a human tutor as necessary. My experience was that my tutored sessions were a bit wasteful (I wasn’t a disciplined student, and certainly wasted a lot of time and money).
My ideal setup is either an iMac or iPad and an electric piano.
I had a goal of introducing my kids to piano, and also wanted to pick it back up myself (I'd been forced to as a kid and hated it, never progressed beyond beginner).
I got myself a casio privia (it's a costco special 88 weighted keys, was the reddit recommendation for beginners at the time). Then paid for lessons with a teacher for my family which by far outweighed the cost of the keyboard.
About 10 years later: rest of family have given up piano, they didn't progress far, and i didn't do any forcing; but it was nice to hear them play when they did. I've kept it up although progress is very slow.
I think my feelings are: - I could have spent more on the piano (my dad got a significantly more expensive piano, and it is more pleasurable to play): quieter keys, better action on the keys. - I feel pretty good about how far my the rest of my family progressed, and am happy that i didn't push - I feel like a teacher somewhat forces you to keep practising even when you don't want, and maintains some progress, I don't think I'd get this from an app.
Ideally, you should use yourself as a guinea pig to test out the teachers in your city to find one that’s best for your kids. In reality, dumping your two-year-old on your wife to do that sucks for both of you. Your local music shop can help steer you away from teachers with bad reputations in your city.
https://youtube.com/@cedarvillemusic?si=BiZ9tF9fYcEkxcMw
This guy has thorough answers to questions no one wants to ask (e.g. Are my hands too small? What if I’m playing for others and I forget how the piece goes? Why does improvisation feel impossible to understand? How long should I practice? Should my hands hurt?).
https://web.archive.org/web/20200118023642/https://howmusicw...
This is the best explanation of music theory I’ve found and I’ve looked everywhere.
https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/wiki/core/modes/
The FAQ on the music theory Reddit has answers to questions that are largely impossible to find elsewhere. “What are modes?” is one of those questions.
The player could make mistakes as well, which means any intelligent algorithm would need to apply some degree of probabilistic calculations to find the most likely point.
Very often, when practising, you'd constantly repeat passages multiple times. And certain passages may also be exactly the same in different parts of the piece as well.
To me it sounds like a incredibly difficult problem to solve. Not sure if the recent AI advances change anything.
Shazam can do generic look-up of music since around 2003, see for example this page on abracadabra [1].
I'd guess that if you limit things to a piano, one could relatively easily find the notes being played with some Fourier magic, and then solve a Hidden Markov Model to find the most plausible position in the music. Using a MIDI interface makes it even simpler.
[1] https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work