9 ms·

Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

248 points by albertru90 2y ago

xlii 2y ago
This looks fascinating. 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).
- rreyes1979 2y ago
  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.
  - THBC 2y ago
    [dead]
  - _def 2y ago
    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)
  - larrysalibra 2y ago
    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!
    - navbaker 2y ago
      I would highly recommend Pianote if you’re looking for an online lessons resource. They have tons of YouTube videos you can check out to see if their style works for you, then you can subscribe to the actual site when you’re ready for a more structured learning path. It did wonders for me getting back into piano after a few decades off!
      - larrysalibra 2y ago
        Thanks! I’ve added it to my list to give it a try!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - nh2 2y ago
    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.) Also consider Synthesia's short list: https://synthesiagame.com/keyboards/info 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 ;-)
    - mrbombastic 2y ago
      Question from an adult because it seems like you have experience with some of these tools, I’ve been using SimplyPiano for a few months, which listens to notes you play and gives you feedback, and while it is satisfying to hear the music I can’t shake that I am not really learning just copying. For instance I can play some of the advanced songs in the app but I open a piece of sheet music and I am lost. Is there similar concern for synthesia?
      - nh2 2y ago
        Yes, the same concern exists for Synthesia. It teaches a significant amount of muscle memory. 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.
- thibaut_barrere 2y ago
  It is a good point, often raised by people. I researched that for my sister for instance, and found that this series https://www.thomann.co.uk/kawai_es_120_b.htm 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.
- emmanueloga_ 2y ago
  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. -- 1: https://studiologic-music.com/products/ https://studiologic-music.com/products/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar
benob 2y ago
Why is it iOS17+ only?
- albertru90 2y ago
  The app uses recent SwiftUI and SwiftData APIs that are not available on older OSes.
oezi 2y ago
[flagged]
- thibaut_barrere 2y ago
  Fourier is harder than MIDI, more technical to achieve, and also less reliable in noisy environments. 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 :-)
  - oezi 2y ago
    Hanon Pro looks already very polished and with many bells and whistles. I think my question came around to snarky and got thus flagged but really is just a curious question why this isn't the core feature of such an app to listen to your playing.
- tomcam 2y ago
  Sounds like an excellent business opportunity for a hacker with your skills.
  - oezi 2y ago
    If you look at the remaining feature set you see that there is a ton of other features required to make a great app. We all have #DayJob to work on, right...
- vanjajaja1 2y ago
  i actually tried this this weekend using spotify's audio to midi library. it didn't work as well as i hoped, but that might be volume related. might investigate a bit more
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
oellegaard 2y ago
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
the_gipsy 2y ago
iOS once touted itself as being honest. Now it doesn't show the price until you install the app?
- yard2010 2y ago
  Google used to advocate being good (or at least not evil) those days are over a long time ago. Enshitification ensues
- oellegaard 2y ago
  It’s free. But it does display the price if it’s paid. If you browse down you’ll even see the price for popular in app purchases
- Toutouxc 2y ago
  It still shows everything, the price of the app itself and the prices of all IAPs. The App Store sucks in many wonderful ways, but pricing transparency isn’t one of them.
- nxobject 2y ago
  That's a little unwarranted; the App Store has always just said "Install" for free apps since its launch. The price otherwise shows up instead of the "Install" caption.
rjzzleep 2y ago
On this note, does anyone know some books in references to applied music theory? I'm a pretty advanced piano player, but a lot of more basic piano players can make up chords to play with with simple tunes that sound pretty good, most of those people seem to know a certain of rules that I don't know. And googling books about piano music on google books or the likes has not yielded any useful results.
- vanjajaja1 2y ago
  I think what you're describing is the difference between learning by 'top down' thinking (ie. learning what to play) vs learning by experimentation 'bottom up' (ie. mashing random things and making mistakes until you eventually learn to replicate your favourite mistakes) 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
  - ToJans 2y ago
    I'm not well versed in this, but I have the basics down: start by finding the bass notes, and add the melody on top. Most of the time the a musical phrase will end on the note that's in the key of the song. Combine the bass note with the third and fifth, and you're already halfway there... 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.
vanjajaja1 2y ago
nice, i was just day dreaming about a similar concept of collecting midi data to create fitness style visualization 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
court-jus 2y ago
It would be awesome if the file format was open and anyone could add their own scores to the app...
- adrianh 2y ago
  Try Soundslice, which lets you import any sheet music. It has a PDF/photo-scanning feature plus an entire sheet music editor built-in. https://www.soundslice.com/ 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.
  - namanyayg 2y ago
    While trying to learn Playing God a couple of weeks ago, I had a desire to loop certain parts and play them with reduced tempo. 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!
    - adrianh 2y ago
      Hey, that's lovely to hear! Thanks for taking the time to share your story. That's exactly my colleagues and I work on this — for outcomes like yours. Keep making music my friend.
smokel 2y ago
Looks nice, but after downloading it, I was a bit disappointed. I mistakenly assumed that this would compare to something like Alfred's Adult Piano Courses [1], but it's much simpler than that. 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/ https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-adult-piano-courses/b/
FLT8 2y ago
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. Well done, thanks for sharing.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  "I like that wrong notes were highlighted" 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!
- albertru90 2y ago
  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.
  - zetsurin 2y ago
    >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 ^ IMO this should be among your top priority.
- deleted 2y ago
spapas82 2y ago
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_Exercises https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_in_60_E...
- oriolid 2y ago
  It is also widely criticized by professional piano teachers (see the link above), and for good reasons.
  - wccrawford 2y ago
    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.
    - kashunstva 2y ago
      Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. 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.
      - solarengineer 2y ago
        Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.
        2y ago
lukko 2y ago
This is great. Can you please add Czerny?
- albertru90 2y ago
  Added to the list.
  - lukko 2y ago
    thank you!
manojlds 2y ago
No Vision Pro?
nxobject 2y ago
As an aside, thanks for making the app available for desktop Mac, even if it of course isn't explicitly designed for it. I think most people overestimate how many people have iPads around; I was never quite able to justify purchasing one given the price-how much I'll use it ratio.
- albertru90 2y ago
  We would love to do a more native Mac app if this takes off. Glad you're interested in it.
roessland 2y ago
Awesome, I'll definitely try it. 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.
- jraph 2y ago
  It doesn't have most of what you say, but it does let you practice on custom scores (midi files), so maybe it can be part of the solution: https://www.pianojacq.com/ https://www.pianojacq.com/ (open source, from jacquesm here)
jocoda 2y ago
Disappointed. The App Store tells me that the app will run on my IPad, an older model, just out of support and waits for me to click install before it tells me it wants iOS 17. 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.
- flemhans 2y ago
  If it's using SwiftUI, a lot of features aren't available if you target older iOS versions.
jmdots 2y ago
How about an LLM that talks to you and can see the midi notes you played, fine tuned to the task of course. I think the teacher part of learning pretty much anything is super important because we’re social beings. Hearing “great job” is priceless when you really did your best.
- dragandj 2y ago
  Then skip the LLM part and just add random "great job" here and there.
  - jmdots 2y ago
    I think I understated the social part. Talking to a teacher is part of it. Not just the gamification.
darylteo 2y ago
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.
- smokel 2y ago
  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. [1] https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work
  - darylteo 2y ago
    One day I hope to be so mathematically inclined to understand the math behind that.
huhtenberg 2y ago
Yo, OP. 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.
- Xeyz0r 2y ago
  And here it is highly valued and can help you more
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Xeyz0r 2y ago
Being able to track progress over time gives me the motivation to keep going..
dfee 2y ago
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.
- tejohnso 2y ago
  I suggest an electronic keyboard with weighted keys and the free Mayron Cole lesson books.
- jimbob45 2y ago
  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. https://youtube.com/@cedarvillemusic?si=BiZ9tF9fYcEkxcMw 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://howmusicworks.org/ 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/ 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.
localfirst 2y ago
There's an idea that an app can replace the boring and hard. For somethings that may be true but piano proficiency is sight reading and muscle memory. This is something you cannot speed run. 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.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
I remember there was a strange PDF of learning piano floating around back in the day by a simple father. Was written in MS word .. did anyone ever try it?
- tzs 2y ago
  Are you thinking of "Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chang [1]? [1] http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/
  - brcmthrowaway 2y ago
    Yes is it still in vogue
peteforde 2y ago
About a week ago, I started practicing daily with an app called Melodics. This is after putting off starting for, well, my whole life. 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.

248 points by albertru90 2y ago

xlii 2y ago

This looks fascinating. 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).

rreyes1979 2y ago
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.
- THBC 2y ago
  [dead]
- _def 2y ago
  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)
- larrysalibra 2y ago
  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!
  - navbaker 2y ago
    I would highly recommend Pianote if you’re looking for an online lessons resource. They have tons of YouTube videos you can check out to see if their style works for you, then you can subscribe to the actual site when you’re ready for a more structured learning path. It did wonders for me getting back into piano after a few decades off!
    - larrysalibra 2y ago
      Thanks! I’ve added it to my list to give it a try!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- nh2 2y ago
  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.) Also consider Synthesia's short list: https://synthesiagame.com/keyboards/info 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 ;-)
  - mrbombastic 2y ago
    Question from an adult because it seems like you have experience with some of these tools, I’ve been using SimplyPiano for a few months, which listens to notes you play and gives you feedback, and while it is satisfying to hear the music I can’t shake that I am not really learning just copying. For instance I can play some of the advanced songs in the app but I open a piece of sheet music and I am lost. Is there similar concern for synthesia?
    - nh2 2y ago
      Yes, the same concern exists for Synthesia. It teaches a significant amount of muscle memory. 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.
thibaut_barrere 2y ago
It is a good point, often raised by people. I researched that for my sister for instance, and found that this series https://www.thomann.co.uk/kawai_es_120_b.htm 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.
emmanueloga_ 2y ago
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. -- 1: https://studiologic-music.com/products/ https://studiologic-music.com/products/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar

benob 2y ago

Why is it iOS17+ only?

albertru90 2y ago
The app uses recent SwiftUI and SwiftData APIs that are not available on older OSes.

oezi 2y ago

[flagged]

thibaut_barrere 2y ago
Fourier is harder than MIDI, more technical to achieve, and also less reliable in noisy environments. 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 :-)
- oezi 2y ago
  Hanon Pro looks already very polished and with many bells and whistles. I think my question came around to snarky and got thus flagged but really is just a curious question why this isn't the core feature of such an app to listen to your playing.
tomcam 2y ago
Sounds like an excellent business opportunity for a hacker with your skills.
- oezi 2y ago
  If you look at the remaining feature set you see that there is a ton of other features required to make a great app. We all have #DayJob to work on, right...
vanjajaja1 2y ago
i actually tried this this weekend using spotify's audio to midi library. it didn't work as well as i hoped, but that might be volume related. might investigate a bit more
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

oellegaard 2y ago

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

the_gipsy 2y ago

iOS once touted itself as being honest. Now it doesn't show the price until you install the app?

yard2010 2y ago
Google used to advocate being good (or at least not evil) those days are over a long time ago. Enshitification ensues
oellegaard 2y ago
It’s free. But it does display the price if it’s paid. If you browse down you’ll even see the price for popular in app purchases
Toutouxc 2y ago
It still shows everything, the price of the app itself and the prices of all IAPs. The App Store sucks in many wonderful ways, but pricing transparency isn’t one of them.
nxobject 2y ago
That's a little unwarranted; the App Store has always just said "Install" for free apps since its launch. The price otherwise shows up instead of the "Install" caption.

rjzzleep 2y ago

On this note, does anyone know some books in references to applied music theory? I'm a pretty advanced piano player, but a lot of more basic piano players can make up chords to play with with simple tunes that sound pretty good, most of those people seem to know a certain of rules that I don't know. And googling books about piano music on google books or the likes has not yielded any useful results.

vanjajaja1 2y ago
I think what you're describing is the difference between learning by 'top down' thinking (ie. learning what to play) vs learning by experimentation 'bottom up' (ie. mashing random things and making mistakes until you eventually learn to replicate your favourite mistakes) 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
- ToJans 2y ago
  I'm not well versed in this, but I have the basics down: start by finding the bass notes, and add the melody on top. Most of the time the a musical phrase will end on the note that's in the key of the song. Combine the bass note with the third and fifth, and you're already halfway there... 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.

vanjajaja1 2y ago

nice, i was just day dreaming about a similar concept of collecting midi data to create fitness style visualization 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

court-jus 2y ago

It would be awesome if the file format was open and anyone could add their own scores to the app...

adrianh 2y ago
Try Soundslice, which lets you import any sheet music. It has a PDF/photo-scanning feature plus an entire sheet music editor built-in. https://www.soundslice.com/ 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.
- namanyayg 2y ago
  While trying to learn Playing God a couple of weeks ago, I had a desire to loop certain parts and play them with reduced tempo. 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!
  - adrianh 2y ago
    Hey, that's lovely to hear! Thanks for taking the time to share your story. That's exactly my colleagues and I work on this — for outcomes like yours. Keep making music my friend.

smokel 2y ago

Looks nice, but after downloading it, I was a bit disappointed. I mistakenly assumed that this would compare to something like Alfred's Adult Piano Courses [1], but it's much simpler than that. 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/ https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-adult-piano-courses/b/

FLT8 2y ago

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. Well done, thanks for sharing.

DidYaWipe 2y ago
"I like that wrong notes were highlighted" 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!
albertru90 2y ago
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.
- zetsurin 2y ago
  >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 ^ IMO this should be among your top priority.
deleted 2y ago

spapas82 2y ago

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_Exercises https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_in_60_E...

oriolid 2y ago
It is also widely criticized by professional piano teachers (see the link above), and for good reasons.
- wccrawford 2y ago
  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.
  - kashunstva 2y ago
    Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. 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.
    - solarengineer 2y ago
      Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.
      - 2y ago

lukko 2y ago

This is great. Can you please add Czerny?

albertru90 2y ago
Added to the list.
- lukko 2y ago
  thank you!

manojlds 2y ago

No Vision Pro?

nxobject 2y ago

As an aside, thanks for making the app available for desktop Mac, even if it of course isn't explicitly designed for it. I think most people overestimate how many people have iPads around; I was never quite able to justify purchasing one given the price-how much I'll use it ratio.

albertru90 2y ago
We would love to do a more native Mac app if this takes off. Glad you're interested in it.

roessland 2y ago

Awesome, I'll definitely try it. 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.

jraph 2y ago
It doesn't have most of what you say, but it does let you practice on custom scores (midi files), so maybe it can be part of the solution: https://www.pianojacq.com/ https://www.pianojacq.com/ (open source, from jacquesm here)

jocoda 2y ago

Disappointed. The App Store tells me that the app will run on my IPad, an older model, just out of support and waits for me to click install before it tells me it wants iOS 17. 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.

flemhans 2y ago
If it's using SwiftUI, a lot of features aren't available if you target older iOS versions.

jmdots 2y ago

How about an LLM that talks to you and can see the midi notes you played, fine tuned to the task of course. I think the teacher part of learning pretty much anything is super important because we’re social beings. Hearing “great job” is priceless when you really did your best.

dragandj 2y ago
Then skip the LLM part and just add random "great job" here and there.
- jmdots 2y ago
  I think I understated the social part. Talking to a teacher is part of it. Not just the gamification.

darylteo 2y ago

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.

smokel 2y ago
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. [1] https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work
- darylteo 2y ago
  One day I hope to be so mathematically inclined to understand the math behind that.

huhtenberg 2y ago

Yo, OP. 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.

Xeyz0r 2y ago
And here it is highly valued and can help you more
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Xeyz0r 2y ago

Being able to track progress over time gives me the motivation to keep going..

dfee 2y ago

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.

tejohnso 2y ago
I suggest an electronic keyboard with weighted keys and the free Mayron Cole lesson books.
jimbob45 2y ago
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. https://youtube.com/@cedarvillemusic?si=BiZ9tF9fYcEkxcMw 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://howmusicworks.org/ 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/ 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.

localfirst 2y ago

There's an idea that an app can replace the boring and hard. For somethings that may be true but piano proficiency is sight reading and muscle memory. This is something you cannot speed run. 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.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

I remember there was a strange PDF of learning piano floating around back in the day by a simple father. Was written in MS word .. did anyone ever try it?

tzs 2y ago
Are you thinking of "Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chang [1]? [1] http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/
- brcmthrowaway 2y ago
  Yes is it still in vogue

peteforde 2y ago

About a week ago, I started practicing daily with an app called Melodics. This is after putting off starting for, well, my whole life. 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.