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This may teach you to "play" piano, but the real question is whether this sort of rote memorization will really teach you how music fundamentally works. Seems a

This may teach you to "play" piano, but the real question is whether this sort of rote memorization will really teach you how music fundamentally works. Seems a bit like re-typing Javascript programs in order to "learn" programming? Will you be able to improvise after enough of this? Play songs by ear? There are a few fundamental musical concepts that I'm not sure you easily pick up by rote memorization: * Most music is based around "chords", which have non-obvious mappings to physical keys. (They're linear intervals in frequency space, but that doesn't make it easy to realize that D/F#/A and Ab/C/Eb are two representations of essentially the same thing) * Likewise, songs can be transposed up or down without affecting their fundamental attributes. (They just sound "higher" or "lower"). However, to do that, you need to be able to shift +/- N keys which is tricky given the difficult layout of a piano. To really do this well, you need to understand the concept of scales/modes.

jacquesm 6y ago
No, it teaches you how to read the scores pretty good actually. The 'rote memorization' can be pushed as well but that's not the goal here, the goal is to learn to read notes fast enough that you can actually play the music. (See attached video). As for improvisation and playing songs by ear: improv requires some knowledge about how music is structured, I have some ideas on showing what the underlying structure is but these have not yet been implemented, we are for now concentrating on accuracy of the rendering of the score (which is still plenty of work) and fingering. Playing by ear is mostly to have a good association between the keys and the sounds they make, this gets harder with chords. As with everything, practice makes perfect and doing this frequently seems to help me quite a bit by picking out songs by ear. So even if it isn't a direct goal of any of the modes of operation of the software it does seem to be a side effect. We will add an 'ear training' module at some point.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  I do like that you are showing the score, instead of doing some sort of Guitar Hero style / abstract grid. That will definitely help people that want to translate this into reading sheet music. And you may be right in that doing this enough will give you a sense of what keys make what sounds, which then can clue you into to how songs work "under the hood". Since you're rendering the score in realtime, you could let users transpose songs up and down which would really help them learn scales. Very nice project, though.
  - weinzierl 6y ago
    > I do like that you are showing the score, instead of doing some sort of Guitar Hero style/abstract grid This and the way it shows these little lines when you hit some wrong keys is really helpful if you are just learning sight reading. Credit for this should go to Piano Booster probably though.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Absolutely, Pianobooster has some rally neat concepts.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Good idea, it is already on the list but not in that context, I will increase its priority.
save_ferris 6y ago
> Will you be able to improvise after enough of this? Play songs by ear? How many Herbie Hancock's have you come across after finishing a grade 1 piano book? Of course a single exercise app or book isn't going to create the perfectly rounded musician. For a child or beginner player, this looks like a great tool. Advanced musical skill is entirely composable. Having solid improvisational skill or technical ability largely depends on how much you practice those various facets of your instrument. The reality is that probably 95%+ of people who pick up an instrument in their lives never make it to that point anyway. You're trying to critique this tool with the expectation that a single learning resource should address all aspects of playing an instrument, when that's never been true of any musical learning resource ever.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  It's a nice tool, didn't intend to come off that negatively. More of a thought experience about the limitations of these types of tools. I'm not sure it's quite beginner level, as I don't see anything that shows you where the note is on the keyboard? You'd have to start with a bit of reading knowledge, or be willing to just hit random keys until you figure out the mappings.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    If you notice the video linked (you really should not be downvoted for good input like this), then you'll notice that my son Luca is playing a piece which is fairly repetitive, but he did not have any instruction at all, the app helps you figure out what is where all by itself, 'random' keys will quickly guide you to the right keys. and then from there once you get the hang of it relative movement should come fairly naturally. The biggest hang-up is the piano keyboard itself with its unequal spacing between adjacent white keys.
  - hashkb 6y ago
    HN can be weirdly sensitive to comments about music being hard; fundamentals being mandatory, etc. I bet if we criticized the code on Music News (not a real thing) it'd be the same way.
- 6y ago
onion2k 6y ago
Not everyone wants to become a composer. A lot of people just want to be able to sit down at a piano and play music they enjoy. Learning by rote works very well for that.
tekkk 6y ago
I'd wager it can't teach you abstract concepts but since abstract concepts are much easier to learn with the practical knowledge of using them, it would definitely be helpful. Also honing motoric skills is a key part in doing many things - arts, sports - so getting accustomed to that is a big plus too. The downside of doing only that is yes, you will be quite lost with the abstract and also reinforce some bad habits. So no cynical HN commentary from me! If it works, it is definitely a big help for learning to play piano.

jacquesm 6y ago

No, it teaches you how to read the scores pretty good actually. The 'rote memorization' can be pushed as well but that's not the goal here, the goal is to learn to read notes fast enough that you can actually play the music. (See attached video). As for improvisation and playing songs by ear: improv requires some knowledge about how music is structured, I have some ideas on showing what the underlying structure is but these have not yet been implemented, we are for now concentrating on accuracy of the rendering of the score (which is still plenty of work) and fingering. Playing by ear is mostly to have a good association between the keys and the sounds they make, this gets harder with chords. As with everything, practice makes perfect and doing this frequently seems to help me quite a bit by picking out songs by ear. So even if it isn't a direct goal of any of the modes of operation of the software it does seem to be a side effect. We will add an 'ear training' module at some point.

drchopchop 6y ago
I do like that you are showing the score, instead of doing some sort of Guitar Hero style / abstract grid. That will definitely help people that want to translate this into reading sheet music. And you may be right in that doing this enough will give you a sense of what keys make what sounds, which then can clue you into to how songs work "under the hood". Since you're rendering the score in realtime, you could let users transpose songs up and down which would really help them learn scales. Very nice project, though.
- weinzierl 6y ago
  > I do like that you are showing the score, instead of doing some sort of Guitar Hero style/abstract grid This and the way it shows these little lines when you hit some wrong keys is really helpful if you are just learning sight reading. Credit for this should go to Piano Booster probably though.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Absolutely, Pianobooster has some rally neat concepts.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Good idea, it is already on the list but not in that context, I will increase its priority.

save_ferris 6y ago

> Will you be able to improvise after enough of this? Play songs by ear? How many Herbie Hancock's have you come across after finishing a grade 1 piano book? Of course a single exercise app or book isn't going to create the perfectly rounded musician. For a child or beginner player, this looks like a great tool. Advanced musical skill is entirely composable. Having solid improvisational skill or technical ability largely depends on how much you practice those various facets of your instrument. The reality is that probably 95%+ of people who pick up an instrument in their lives never make it to that point anyway. You're trying to critique this tool with the expectation that a single learning resource should address all aspects of playing an instrument, when that's never been true of any musical learning resource ever.

drchopchop 6y ago
It's a nice tool, didn't intend to come off that negatively. More of a thought experience about the limitations of these types of tools. I'm not sure it's quite beginner level, as I don't see anything that shows you where the note is on the keyboard? You'd have to start with a bit of reading knowledge, or be willing to just hit random keys until you figure out the mappings.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  If you notice the video linked (you really should not be downvoted for good input like this), then you'll notice that my son Luca is playing a piece which is fairly repetitive, but he did not have any instruction at all, the app helps you figure out what is where all by itself, 'random' keys will quickly guide you to the right keys. and then from there once you get the hang of it relative movement should come fairly naturally. The biggest hang-up is the piano keyboard itself with its unequal spacing between adjacent white keys.
- hashkb 6y ago
  HN can be weirdly sensitive to comments about music being hard; fundamentals being mandatory, etc. I bet if we criticized the code on Music News (not a real thing) it'd be the same way.
6y ago

onion2k 6y ago

Not everyone wants to become a composer. A lot of people just want to be able to sit down at a piano and play music they enjoy. Learning by rote works very well for that.

tekkk 6y ago

I'd wager it can't teach you abstract concepts but since abstract concepts are much easier to learn with the practical knowledge of using them, it would definitely be helpful. Also honing motoric skills is a key part in doing many things - arts, sports - so getting accustomed to that is a big plus too. The downside of doing only that is yes, you will be quite lost with the abstract and also reinforce some bad habits. So no cynical HN commentary from me! If it works, it is definitely a big help for learning to play piano.