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.

I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this.

Hanon could have some value if teachers and students would employ the concept of weight transfer from finger to finger with constant contact with the keyboard. But his idea of finger calisthenics is a relic of the 19th c.

I guess it can (should) be used like this: keep the scores, disregard the instructions, add your own exercises on top of the scores.

I do find it a bit boring, but it seems it makes sense to warm up before playing and to strengthen the fingers / hands (although I have no evidence of this whatsoever). I guess warming up also helps moving your focus from whatever you were doing to the piano.

What other ways do pianists use for this?

A couple of piano teachers suggested reading stuff while doing Hanon, and apparently Liszt was known to do that.

Oh my goodness yes. I started playing on January and followed the Hanon instructions with the sheets. I have been trying to release tension, especially around my flying pinky… and realized that this way of playing Hanon was making it worse. I am in the process of fixing this now, and am enjoying less tension.

That reminds me there are people who type on the (computer) keyboard with two fingers, searching for each key and pecking at it. I was fortunate to have "blind typing" classes as a child, including a fun game where you type to shoot at words falling on a city. That skill has been really valuable over the years.

I wonder if there are similar concepts for learning to play on the piano keyboard, like "blind" playing to learn where the notes are without even looking; or games where you can practice playing melodies. Even the idea of "weight transfer" seems related to computer keyboard, like typing without lifting your fingers too high.

The nice thing is that you have to learn to play without looking at your hands because your eyes are fixed at the screen. The less nice part is that especially with Synthesia style it is difficult to play without the app.

Good point about the game interface, how getting too used to playing with the color indicators does not translate to sheet music during performances. I think I'll prefer to look at sheet music during practice too.

I'm checking out the other apps you mentioned. So interesting to see successful implementations of the "gamified learning" concept, with piano and other instruments. I can imagine a similar approach might work for other areas of study, like language learning.

But if you’re a hunt-and-peck for piano, I would recommend stop what you’re doing and go back to the very beginning and relearn everything properly so that you don’t have any bad habits.

As for other resources, this app looks like a good bet!

Hanon is battle tested and all the great virtuoso have gone through it whether they like it or not.

The problem with modern apps and paid learning online is the idea that the boring and hard parts can be skipped with some clever marketing.

If this was true then we would be churning out new pianists at faster rate but its falling but the age is dropping

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).

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 ;-)

But that is not such a bad thing:

* Muscle memory is part of the game, for any instrument (at least for the ones I know).

* Some of the muscle memory is transferable. For example, when you learn some chords on Synthesia, you can transfer many of them to other parts of the keyboard, also when you're not using the tool.

* For many people, motivation must come first. Learning a piece by muscle memory shows you that you can do it. Wanting to read sheet music naturally follows, from the fact that muscle memory is limited, and to play more stuff.

* Synthesia also teaches rhythm, which some people already have but others don't. You can learn rhythm because Synthesia shows how long each note is, and you can see it coming ahead of time.

* You should learn to read music notation in all cases. Learning the concept only takes 30 seconds: Remember where one note is and do the rest by line counting. The speed of reading will come automatically over time. Then for some songs, enable Synthesia's sheet note display and cover the falling notes from sight. It will show you whether you're reading it correctly. It'll be painfully slow at the beginning but improve over a couple days. It allows you to transfer over to just reading the sheets. Eventually that will become the more convenient way, as the need to download (e.g. from MuseScore and import into Synthesia) disappears; not that it's great effort, but eventually you can just browse easy pieces of sheet music and start playing the ones you like as you see them.

Tools like Synthesia help improve on some of the skill axes; use other methods for the remaining ones.

It's no different than picking up a ball and playing basketball on your own or tennis...or a simple coding book and making a CRUD app without all the best practices or Code Complete and your fancy frameworks.

I got the exact piano op mentioned on prime day for $150?. I have Simply Piano. My daughter will ask to play the "piano game".

Last summer I signed up my daughter for Ukulele class with a teacher. She barely touched outside what was required assignments.

Yes in the perfect world I have a real piano, with a real teacher who is great with kids who makes it so fun my daughter wants to practice everyday.

But I only have one shot to get her hooked and build momentum. IMHO passion comes first, then technique. Passion comes from having fun.

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!

That's exactly my colleagues and I work on this — for outcomes like yours. Keep making music my friend.

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.

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

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

Hot damn, I can play [a bit of?] piano now. I am genuinely shocked and couldn't be more excited.

Here's the thing: the app kind of flips the script on what I have always intuitively felt holds most musical teaching approaches back, which is the insistance that you want to play classical sheet music.

I very much do not want that! I want to be able to learn to be comfortable jumping to notes so that I can play contemporary, recognizable songs and eventually start to craft my own originals. I want to think in terms of bass lines, melodies and leads.

I think classical music is beautiful to hear in the abstract, but the idea that it's how or why you want to be able to play keyboard is actually super fatal, especially if you want to engage a young person.

What I'm finding as I work through exercises and practice on songs I either love or recognize is that my awful sense of timing is improving noticably every day because I know how Hey Ya! is supposed to feel, and so long as it feels wrong, my brain and my fingers have a target to work towards.

And let me just say that the gamification works. Sure, getting 90% or more will earn you three stars, but if you're like me, you want to see a wall of Perfect.

Anyhow, I don't dispute that when it comes to learning classical music from sheet, Hanon Pro probably raises the bar. But my immediate and visceral reaction to the screenshot was a hard nope.

what would be helpful for a beginner/intermediate is if i could practice my scales and chords, without first telling this app what i'm doing, then this app could track which scales / chords / etc i spent most time in and where my deficiencies/gaps are

Personally, I doubt that is wise to charge money for this. Sure, you put in some work, but the value is fairly low, and you'd probably only get payments from disappointed customers.

Edit: apparently the added value comes from using a MIDI device, which I don't have, so my comment might be a bit too negative. Most piano apps support microphone input, which is easier to set up and attracts a larger audience.

[1] https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-adult-piano-courses/b/

Pity, this would be a great use for an older model.

Is there a reason to hard wire this to iOS 17? Version is configurable in xCode and so I'm wondering what specifics bind it to 17.

The purpose of Hanon is to teach aspiring pianists that real effort and grinding is required to be able to make that jump into the world of virtuoso and the more resistance a student puts up the greater the probability of them dropping out.

I'm just throwing my two cents as a someone trained in classical piano. Coding is also similar in that if you skip the tough and boring part of your journey it will not set you up with the solid fundamentals to tackle complicated problems.

Mastering a piece is not that different from mastering programming.

That's your third post on HN in two years. All posts are promo, and yet you made not a single comment.

If you are doing a "Show HN", it wouldn't hurt to engage with people a little. Otherwise it looks like a low effort drive-by ad and not much else.

what helped me was to imagine charlie day from its always in sunny in philadelphia saying "idk man, the piano just speaks to me", then I pretend to be a rainman style idiot-savant piano player until it starts to sound good

Typical chord combinations are in the 1-4-5-6, so when the key is in C, for the first chord (I) you start on the C, skip one, E, skip one and then G. These 3 notes compose the first chord. To get the second chord, just move your fingers one key to the right.

A major scale in C contains the following chords if you move your 1-3-5 grip one key to the right each time:

- I: C (C-E-G)

- ii: Dm (D-F-A)

- iii: Em (E-G-B)

- IV: F (F-A-C)

- V: G (G-B-D)

- vi: Am (A-C-E)

- vii: Bdim (B-D-F)

Capital roman numerals indicate major chords (happy-ish), lowercase indicate minor (sad-ish).

Just try a few combos of I, IV, V and vi with your right hand, while hitting the first note of the chord with your bass.

You will instantly come to a few recognisable tunes.

Up next is transposing scales: move every note two half steps up to get to a major scale in the key of D for example.

Another handy trick is inversions: look at the individual notes in a chord and when switching from one chord to another, minimize have movement by playing some of the notes an octave higher or lower.

This is just the start, but it should help you a long way to play list of the simple pop songs.

Music Theory Remixed by Kevin Holm-Hudson is great, accessible but pretty long. Still, I finally understand music theory more or less.

Also from a HN MVP point of view this is about picking shortest path and ship something (especially important since there are other things to implement as well), and Fourier can be added later.

But yeah philosophically I understand your frustration, as someone who has implemented both :-)