6 ms·

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pie

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unfortunately they're not optional. It's hard to include correct fingering in the model without some kind of camera and image recognition system, or special keys and finger sensors, or something equally obscure. There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano, but it's a really hard problem to solve well. The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall. The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. It takes everyone a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get good at it - even those with talent. So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work.

speedgoose 6y ago
I'm an adult beginning to learn piano using Flowkey. It's criticized by the experts but I feel like it does a relatively good job at teaching basic piano finger techniques. I have no wish to become a piano expert anyway, I play music as a hobby.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  I'm learning as an adult. My piano teacher keeps stressing musicality, feeling the music, feeling the beat, everything like that is more important than technique.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    The interesting thing for me is that this software taught me more about chords, beats, timing and so on than any of the teachers that I've had over the years because it is endlessly patient.
    - kzrdude 6y ago
      I guess. The teacher is the guide, to give direction, not to sit through the exercises you need to do with you.
  - rtsil 6y ago
    They are indeed more important than technique, but technique is a given. Without solid technique, musicality does not matter. Technique is what gives you confidence, it allows you to experiment and fine tune your artistic skills. To work on your expression instead of grappling with what's on the sheet. Acquiring (and maintaining) technique requires hard work and time, but it's relatively easy once you combine these two factors. Developing a good ear, a good sense of rhythm, when to play on tempo, slightly before the tempo or slighly after, really understanding the music, that is infinitely more difficult so it make sense for a teacher to stress that part.
taylodl 6y ago
The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. You're not joking either! I played trumpet when I was in MS/HS. Sure, you can play simple songs at your first concert after 3 months of playing - but it takes 3-5 years to get competent, not an expert mind you, but competent. I started playing guitar as an older adult. Same story. You can start playing songs starting with lesson 1. This is great! Look at all the progress I'm making! I'm on year 7 now and I'm just starting to get to the point where I'd say yeah, I'm good. Not great, but good. To your point, it takes a long time to master an instrument and no one has discovered a short cut. It's hard work. On another note, once you appreciate the work it takes to not just become good but become great at playing an instrument then support those who've dedicated their lives to becoming great. Otherwise it's a skill humanity is going to lose over time and that would be really sad.
- etothet 6y ago
  I've been playing trumpet for 34 years and sometimes I still don't even feel like I play it competently! :)
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Are you having fun though?
necrotic_comp 6y ago
This is an excellent point- as mentioned below, MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. , all of which are quite important to understanding a piece ; Western music notation is both incredibly dense and concise, with no information wasted. Part of the art of practicing is the mental work of abstraction and internalization of the music - breaking it into smaller sections, understanding the key changes, seeing the broader rhythmic structure, etc. - if you don't have this and (more importantly) don't have a teacher to help guide you through this process, you're definitely going to hit a brick wall once things start to get woolly.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  > MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. They actually do. What they don't take into account is whether a particular black key is a sharp or a flat, and this causes all kinds of headaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    I stand corrected. Enharmonic stuff has to be a nightmare.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      That's putting it mildly, but I'm slowly getting more grip on it, fortunately a lot of people far smarter than me have spent a lot of time on this problem and bit by bit I'm implementing their thoughts into software.
      - murbard2 6y ago
        A fun example is this bar from Liebenstraum no 3, https://imgur.com/a/ud1VlJF https://imgur.com/a/ud1VlJF It's the second bar on, the left hand goes A F# B# D# B# F# - Aflat F# C Eflat C F# Only the first note has actually changed though. Enharmonics in the same bar for the same pattern. I suppose there's some musicological explanation for this, maybe something along the lines of working towards a key change, but good luck intuiting this in software...
jacquesm 6y ago
Fingering hints are work in progress, it is one of the most important things we will add. So completely agreed that it is important. That said, I've taught myself some pretty complicated pieces with it and fingering tends to be something that works out over time because there really is only one comfortable way of playing a piece. 90% or so will be obvious, and the 10% that remains will require some hard thinking on how to move your hands and place your fingers so that it feels natural. Bach is pretty brutal: try a fingering that isn't optimal and you simply won't be able to play it (or even injure yourself). > There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano, but it's a really hard problem to solve well. Agreed. So, my previous 'side project' I babysat for about two decades, I'm in this for the long haul and fully intend for it to be 'best of breed' and standard setting. Which is one of the reasons why we are recruiting a piano teacher right now. > The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall. But that's already better than nothing at all, and if we can find a way around that brick wall then I see no reason why it could not go much further than that. I don't think a piece of software can be a substitute for a teacher, but I do know that if I'm practicing I'd rather do that by myself than to have a teacher look over my shoulder for hours on end. > The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. It takes everyone a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get good at it - even those with talent. That we fully agree on. But that doesn't mean people can't get from zero to fifty before deciding that they need better tools and better teachers. There is room for a multitude of tracks some of which will lead to success. The main objectives for me are: to help beginners achieve a level of immediate success that it increases their interest, to ensure that they can get to some level of proficiency before shelling out a lot of money, to overcome the usual frustration that causes people to abandon their chosen instrument, to ensure that they don't learn bad habits. > So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work. This is also very true. But it may be possible to chart a path that includes both of those in one offering, I'm not sure that we are on that path right now but it definitely is the intention. Think of this as the beginnings of an engine, which can be used in many different ways. I now first want to get that engine perfected and then to create the rest of the application around it. So far, especially the 'auto' mode which creates small lessons based on your performance so far has been a game changer for me and for the rest of the people that have been playing around with it, it is conceptually simple, a bit tricky to implement but now that it is there I wonder how I did without it before. The ROI of practice time invested in a piece versus my ability to play it has literally jumped up because of that.
y7 6y ago
> There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano I wonder whether that's actually true. Or maybe it depends on what level you're trying to achieve. If you want to become a good piano player, the feedback mechanism that corrects your playing should actually come from listening yourself. A large part of the challenge in becoming a good player is figuring out what to listen for -- this is also why you need a teacher, because you simply do not hear your mistakes yourself in the beginning. Of course here I'm mostly referring to musicality, and not just whether you're hitting the correct notes. When learning the piano one usually starts with the latter, but I wonder if you make piano more game-like it causes you to underdevelop your own feedback and reward systems, leading to more problems at a later stage.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  There was a lot of work done to the the timing as accurate as the chosen environment (the browser) allows and the grading takes into account both what you play as well as when you play it. There are more dimensions to add still: note release point and the volume at which the note is played. I think the software actually helps you to spot subtle errors quite quickly, but you'd have to try it to see for yourself.
  - TrueDuality 6y ago
    FWIW both release point and volume are available to the software (MIDI includes strength/velocity of keypresses, vibrato, and release events)
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Yes, that's what MIDI is all about. on/off/volume those are the basic components of any midi file.
murbard2 6y ago
> This will not teach you to play piano. I agree, but tools like this or Synthesia can potentially help you practice the piano, which is what you should be spending most of your time on.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  That is an excellent point and very well put.
jgwil2 6y ago
> The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall. How many kids or adults who start with traditional piano lessons will actually make it past this level? I'm sure that it is the case that most people will eventually plateau using an app, but I doubt that a control group of people taking lessons would perform much better, and apps at least solve a problem of access. The vast majority of children and virtually all adults starting piano will never achieve a high level of musicianship, but their lives may well still be enriched by the musical knowledge they gain.
jacquesm 6y ago
Thinking some more about your comment, would you be willing to criticize the application in detail to give us pointers about where we can improve it? We have some interesting ideas for the fingering problem which I won't share publicly here until we are ready to prove them.
mcguire 6y ago
Are you gatekeeping music?
- mcguire 6y ago
  Hey, that is the usual answer to "it's really hard to learn how to do something" here: music, programming, occasionally medicine. It's true, getting very good is a great deal of work. But, you don't have to be a virtuoso to get some benefits. An app won't teach you to play well enough to give a concert at Carnegie Hall. But, statistically speaking, you aren't going to play Carnegie Hall at all.
danudey 6y ago
> So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work. I think the value is in option #1. My son is 5 years old and just started grade 1; his best friend at school has two parents who are quite musical, and so he's been taking violin lessons. Thanks to COVID, he was stuck in the house, bored, all summer, and decided to spend basically the whole time practicing (mind you, the kid is barely 6) and now he's way beyond the other kids his age and is extremely proud of what he's accomplished. Conversely, my son hates fine motor skill activities; he's not good at them, so he doesn't want to do them, so he doesn't get good at them. We couldn't convince him to practice drawing, writing his letters, anything; he didn't want anything to do with it. Until, that is, we told him (not entirely falsely) that improving his ability to use a pen, pencil, marker, etc. with precision would also help his ability to use a Switch joy-con thumbstick with more precision. Last year, in kindergarden, he would get extremely (disruptively) upset when he even thought it would soon be time to do art, drawing, letters, whatever. Now he starts every morning in class by drawing. There are other things he could be doing, apparently, but he draws, every morning, because the idea of getting better at video games got him over his initial resistance to try something new that he wasn't good at and to improve at it. I doubt I could ever get him to really practice piano, or to even get him interested in it, but if I put something in front of him that showed him how to play the Super Mario Bros theme I think he'd be pretty excited about it. I think I'll try this afternoon. Sometimes it's not about getting great; sometimes it's not even about getting good. Sometimes it's just about starting in the first place.
- toast0 6y ago
  > Conversely, my son hates fine motor skill activities; he's not good at them My motor skills are _fine_, and I had a lot of issues with that throughout schooling (especially cursive, grrr, but drawing/art was also hard), but I played a string instrument (bass, and guitar), and didn't feel the same kind of frustration with that. I mean, chords are hard and kind of frustrating, but I think that's true for everyone. Piano and fretted guitars have the bonus that you can't be off pitch, as long as you hit the right one. Moving a pencil on a page is a lot different, you have to push down enough, but not too much, while making shapes in the right sequence, and you have to fit in the lines, etc, etc. UGH. Hitting the keys with the right strength is important for piano, but at a beginner level, just doing it not too hard is enough.
myself248 6y ago
> It's hard to include correct fingering in the model without some kind of camera and image recognition system That seems like a splendid idea. High-res cameras are cheap, and computer vision is all the rage lately.
agumonkey 6y ago
but this might teach to have some kind of fun too often lessons are sadistic chores ps: I also beg to differ about finger pattern, I've seen some seasoned piano players doing just whatever worked, the kinetics of playing allow for more than one pattern most of the time
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyYcnXQZJY&list=RDzWmz5-NoFzk&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyYcnXQZJY&list=RDzWmz5-NoF... for some very interesting fingering techniques.
dheera 6y ago
I think it really comes down to what your purpose is. If you're happy hitting grade 1 and hitting that brick wall just to have some fun, the apps do have their place, because these are people who wouldn't otherwise shell out for a teacher. It may even help people gauge whether or not they like an instrument before they move forward or change instruments. I do 100% agree with you though that for anyone who wants to be even remotely serious, the cost of a teacher is a very good investment.
RobinL 6y ago
As a beginner who wants to improve, I'd like to understanding your finger technique point better. I saw a video recently [1] which claims to use AI to predict finger technique for an arbitrary MIDI file. This was always an issue for me in using Synthesia [2] - a piece of software that 'gamifies' leaning a piece. Synthesia is capable of displaying fingering information, but only if someone has manually input it - and without the fingering it's almost impossible for a beginner to learn difficult passages. If MIDI files contained accurate fingering (by which I mean which finger of which hand...although maybe there's more to it?), and then could be input into a game - is this useful education tool? [1] https://twitter.com/fayezsalka/status/1314613736511016961?s=20 https://twitter.com/fayezsalka/status/1314613736511016961?s=... [2] https://synthesiagame.com/ https://synthesiagame.com/
gbuk2013 6y ago
Agreed. It’s fine if it’s just a game to get someone interested in the idea of playing the piano but you need to switch to proper instruction soon especially if the person starts playing regularly, as incorrect posture and hand position can cause injury with enough practice. Even if it doesn’t come to that, undoing learned bad muscle memory takes a lot of time and effort.

speedgoose 6y ago

I'm an adult beginning to learn piano using Flowkey. It's criticized by the experts but I feel like it does a relatively good job at teaching basic piano finger techniques. I have no wish to become a piano expert anyway, I play music as a hobby.

kzrdude 6y ago
I'm learning as an adult. My piano teacher keeps stressing musicality, feeling the music, feeling the beat, everything like that is more important than technique.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  The interesting thing for me is that this software taught me more about chords, beats, timing and so on than any of the teachers that I've had over the years because it is endlessly patient.
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    I guess. The teacher is the guide, to give direction, not to sit through the exercises you need to do with you.
- rtsil 6y ago
  They are indeed more important than technique, but technique is a given. Without solid technique, musicality does not matter. Technique is what gives you confidence, it allows you to experiment and fine tune your artistic skills. To work on your expression instead of grappling with what's on the sheet. Acquiring (and maintaining) technique requires hard work and time, but it's relatively easy once you combine these two factors. Developing a good ear, a good sense of rhythm, when to play on tempo, slightly before the tempo or slighly after, really understanding the music, that is infinitely more difficult so it make sense for a teacher to stress that part.

taylodl 6y ago

The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. You're not joking either! I played trumpet when I was in MS/HS. Sure, you can play simple songs at your first concert after 3 months of playing - but it takes 3-5 years to get competent, not an expert mind you, but competent. I started playing guitar as an older adult. Same story. You can start playing songs starting with lesson 1. This is great! Look at all the progress I'm making! I'm on year 7 now and I'm just starting to get to the point where I'd say yeah, I'm good. Not great, but good. To your point, it takes a long time to master an instrument and no one has discovered a short cut. It's hard work. On another note, once you appreciate the work it takes to not just become good but become great at playing an instrument then support those who've dedicated their lives to becoming great. Otherwise it's a skill humanity is going to lose over time and that would be really sad.

etothet 6y ago
I've been playing trumpet for 34 years and sometimes I still don't even feel like I play it competently! :)
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Are you having fun though?

necrotic_comp 6y ago

This is an excellent point- as mentioned below, MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. , all of which are quite important to understanding a piece ; Western music notation is both incredibly dense and concise, with no information wasted. Part of the art of practicing is the mental work of abstraction and internalization of the music - breaking it into smaller sections, understanding the key changes, seeing the broader rhythmic structure, etc. - if you don't have this and (more importantly) don't have a teacher to help guide you through this process, you're definitely going to hit a brick wall once things start to get woolly.

jacquesm 6y ago
> MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. They actually do. What they don't take into account is whether a particular black key is a sharp or a flat, and this causes all kinds of headaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic
- necrotic_comp 6y ago
  I stand corrected. Enharmonic stuff has to be a nightmare.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    That's putting it mildly, but I'm slowly getting more grip on it, fortunately a lot of people far smarter than me have spent a lot of time on this problem and bit by bit I'm implementing their thoughts into software.
    - murbard2 6y ago
      A fun example is this bar from Liebenstraum no 3, https://imgur.com/a/ud1VlJF https://imgur.com/a/ud1VlJF It's the second bar on, the left hand goes A F# B# D# B# F# - Aflat F# C Eflat C F# Only the first note has actually changed though. Enharmonics in the same bar for the same pattern. I suppose there's some musicological explanation for this, maybe something along the lines of working towards a key change, but good luck intuiting this in software...

jacquesm 6y ago

Fingering hints are work in progress, it is one of the most important things we will add. So completely agreed that it is important. That said, I've taught myself some pretty complicated pieces with it and fingering tends to be something that works out over time because there really is only one comfortable way of playing a piece. 90% or so will be obvious, and the 10% that remains will require some hard thinking on how to move your hands and place your fingers so that it feels natural. Bach is pretty brutal: try a fingering that isn't optimal and you simply won't be able to play it (or even injure yourself). > There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano, but it's a really hard problem to solve well. Agreed. So, my previous 'side project' I babysat for about two decades, I'm in this for the long haul and fully intend for it to be 'best of breed' and standard setting. Which is one of the reasons why we are recruiting a piano teacher right now. > The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall. But that's already better than nothing at all, and if we can find a way around that brick wall then I see no reason why it could not go much further than that. I don't think a piece of software can be a substitute for a teacher, but I do know that if I'm practicing I'd rather do that by myself than to have a teacher look over my shoulder for hours on end. > The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. It takes everyone a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get good at it - even those with talent. That we fully agree on. But that doesn't mean people can't get from zero to fifty before deciding that they need better tools and better teachers. There is room for a multitude of tracks some of which will lead to success. The main objectives for me are: to help beginners achieve a level of immediate success that it increases their interest, to ensure that they can get to some level of proficiency before shelling out a lot of money, to overcome the usual frustration that causes people to abandon their chosen instrument, to ensure that they don't learn bad habits. > So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work. This is also very true. But it may be possible to chart a path that includes both of those in one offering, I'm not sure that we are on that path right now but it definitely is the intention. Think of this as the beginnings of an engine, which can be used in many different ways. I now first want to get that engine perfected and then to create the rest of the application around it. So far, especially the 'auto' mode which creates small lessons based on your performance so far has been a game changer for me and for the rest of the people that have been playing around with it, it is conceptually simple, a bit tricky to implement but now that it is there I wonder how I did without it before. The ROI of practice time invested in a piece versus my ability to play it has literally jumped up because of that.

y7 6y ago

> There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano I wonder whether that's actually true. Or maybe it depends on what level you're trying to achieve. If you want to become a good piano player, the feedback mechanism that corrects your playing should actually come from listening yourself. A large part of the challenge in becoming a good player is figuring out what to listen for -- this is also why you need a teacher, because you simply do not hear your mistakes yourself in the beginning. Of course here I'm mostly referring to musicality, and not just whether you're hitting the correct notes. When learning the piano one usually starts with the latter, but I wonder if you make piano more game-like it causes you to underdevelop your own feedback and reward systems, leading to more problems at a later stage.

jacquesm 6y ago
There was a lot of work done to the the timing as accurate as the chosen environment (the browser) allows and the grading takes into account both what you play as well as when you play it. There are more dimensions to add still: note release point and the volume at which the note is played. I think the software actually helps you to spot subtle errors quite quickly, but you'd have to try it to see for yourself.
- TrueDuality 6y ago
  FWIW both release point and volume are available to the software (MIDI includes strength/velocity of keypresses, vibrato, and release events)
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Yes, that's what MIDI is all about. on/off/volume those are the basic components of any midi file.

murbard2 6y ago

> This will not teach you to play piano. I agree, but tools like this or Synthesia can potentially help you practice the piano, which is what you should be spending most of your time on.

jacquesm 6y ago
That is an excellent point and very well put.

jgwil2 6y ago

> The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall. How many kids or adults who start with traditional piano lessons will actually make it past this level? I'm sure that it is the case that most people will eventually plateau using an app, but I doubt that a control group of people taking lessons would perform much better, and apps at least solve a problem of access. The vast majority of children and virtually all adults starting piano will never achieve a high level of musicianship, but their lives may well still be enriched by the musical knowledge they gain.

jacquesm 6y ago

Thinking some more about your comment, would you be willing to criticize the application in detail to give us pointers about where we can improve it? We have some interesting ideas for the fingering problem which I won't share publicly here until we are ready to prove them.

mcguire 6y ago

Are you gatekeeping music?

mcguire 6y ago
Hey, that is the usual answer to "it's really hard to learn how to do something" here: music, programming, occasionally medicine. It's true, getting very good is a great deal of work. But, you don't have to be a virtuoso to get some benefits. An app won't teach you to play well enough to give a concert at Carnegie Hall. But, statistically speaking, you aren't going to play Carnegie Hall at all.

danudey 6y ago

> So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work. I think the value is in option #1. My son is 5 years old and just started grade 1; his best friend at school has two parents who are quite musical, and so he's been taking violin lessons. Thanks to COVID, he was stuck in the house, bored, all summer, and decided to spend basically the whole time practicing (mind you, the kid is barely 6) and now he's way beyond the other kids his age and is extremely proud of what he's accomplished. Conversely, my son hates fine motor skill activities; he's not good at them, so he doesn't want to do them, so he doesn't get good at them. We couldn't convince him to practice drawing, writing his letters, anything; he didn't want anything to do with it. Until, that is, we told him (not entirely falsely) that improving his ability to use a pen, pencil, marker, etc. with precision would also help his ability to use a Switch joy-con thumbstick with more precision. Last year, in kindergarden, he would get extremely (disruptively) upset when he even thought it would soon be time to do art, drawing, letters, whatever. Now he starts every morning in class by drawing. There are other things he could be doing, apparently, but he draws, every morning, because the idea of getting better at video games got him over his initial resistance to try something new that he wasn't good at and to improve at it. I doubt I could ever get him to really practice piano, or to even get him interested in it, but if I put something in front of him that showed him how to play the Super Mario Bros theme I think he'd be pretty excited about it. I think I'll try this afternoon. Sometimes it's not about getting great; sometimes it's not even about getting good. Sometimes it's just about starting in the first place.

toast0 6y ago
> Conversely, my son hates fine motor skill activities; he's not good at them My motor skills are _fine_, and I had a lot of issues with that throughout schooling (especially cursive, grrr, but drawing/art was also hard), but I played a string instrument (bass, and guitar), and didn't feel the same kind of frustration with that. I mean, chords are hard and kind of frustrating, but I think that's true for everyone. Piano and fretted guitars have the bonus that you can't be off pitch, as long as you hit the right one. Moving a pencil on a page is a lot different, you have to push down enough, but not too much, while making shapes in the right sequence, and you have to fit in the lines, etc, etc. UGH. Hitting the keys with the right strength is important for piano, but at a beginner level, just doing it not too hard is enough.

myself248 6y ago

> It's hard to include correct fingering in the model without some kind of camera and image recognition system That seems like a splendid idea. High-res cameras are cheap, and computer vision is all the rage lately.

agumonkey 6y ago

but this might teach to have some kind of fun too often lessons are sadistic chores ps: I also beg to differ about finger pattern, I've seen some seasoned piano players doing just whatever worked, the kinetics of playing allow for more than one pattern most of the time

jacquesm 6y ago
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyYcnXQZJY&list=RDzWmz5-NoFzk&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyYcnXQZJY&list=RDzWmz5-NoF... for some very interesting fingering techniques.

dheera 6y ago

I think it really comes down to what your purpose is. If you're happy hitting grade 1 and hitting that brick wall just to have some fun, the apps do have their place, because these are people who wouldn't otherwise shell out for a teacher. It may even help people gauge whether or not they like an instrument before they move forward or change instruments. I do 100% agree with you though that for anyone who wants to be even remotely serious, the cost of a teacher is a very good investment.

RobinL 6y ago

As a beginner who wants to improve, I'd like to understanding your finger technique point better. I saw a video recently [1] which claims to use AI to predict finger technique for an arbitrary MIDI file. This was always an issue for me in using Synthesia [2] - a piece of software that 'gamifies' leaning a piece. Synthesia is capable of displaying fingering information, but only if someone has manually input it - and without the fingering it's almost impossible for a beginner to learn difficult passages. If MIDI files contained accurate fingering (by which I mean which finger of which hand...although maybe there's more to it?), and then could be input into a game - is this useful education tool? [1] https://twitter.com/fayezsalka/status/1314613736511016961?s=20 https://twitter.com/fayezsalka/status/1314613736511016961?s=... [2] https://synthesiagame.com/ https://synthesiagame.com/

gbuk2013 6y ago

Agreed. It’s fine if it’s just a game to get someone interested in the idea of playing the piano but you need to switch to proper instruction soon especially if the person starts playing regularly, as incorrect posture and hand position can cause injury with enough practice. Even if it doesn’t come to that, undoing learned bad muscle memory takes a lot of time and effort.