This is cool. I am wondering if anyone knows if there is a game like Guitar Hero (old playstation game with a custom controller), but for piano and with MIDI input support, something to practice the mechanical skills, preferably with a library of beginner-friendly charts?
Check out Synthesia (has MIDI support and a large library of songs with difficulty ratings) and Pianote (more structured learning but with game elements). Both have beginner-friendly content and visual feedback similar to Guitar Hero.
This sounds great in theory. I don't have a midi interface, but using the home row is a great idea.
If I install the hosted .deb and run it though, then press a, s, d with a 5 second wait it's fine. If I push them after half a second, so while the previous note is playing, it goes very wrong. Is that supposed to happen?
a (C plays, wait 1 second, C still plays), s (after C finishes D plays, a long time later).
press a,s,d and it's C for about 3 seconds, then D and E together.
Awesome! I don't know how to play the piano, so I built a little midi piano app[0] and then realized I didn't know how to make the app teach me how to play. I've been looking through other "how to play" apps, and got some interesting ideas, but I love how straightforward your approach is. I'm definitely at the level where simply practicing and reinforcing scales would help a lot, so I'd love to add a similar type of functionality to my app. Thanks for putting this together!
I'm appreciative of people attempting to help others learn music, so first of all thanks!
I'd suggest people really focus on their ear training though over visual feedback. Just play your scales through the circle of fifths -- set a metronome at 60, go for both hands, two octaves, parallel and contrary motion. Start with major and then move on to the three types of minor. The thing you're developing is internalizing the sound of the scales. Just picking out an F harmonic minor scale and getting a visualization I think is less fruitful for the long term.
Also, for triads, while it is super important to know what the quality of the chords are inside a scale (so that you can pick up your forms like a ii-V-I in any key), I think it's more important to practice the chords themselves. When I was taught, my teacher just had me pick a few keys every morning, and then practice the major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads, with their inversions. Within a week you'll have practiced all of them. Once he could call out any key and I could play them up and down with the metronome at a decent clip, we moved onto the 10 four part chords and did the same. And then did it again in open position. And then... there's always more!
For learning how the triads sit inside a key, I'd suggest playing the triad in the left hand and then playing up and down the scale so that you can start hearing the chord with the mode. So, Cmaj triad, play the C scale up/down, Dmin triad, play D dorian up/down, etc. At least that's how I was taught.
When I was starting piano and wanted to get better at sight reading, I made a small quiz app that shows a note on a staff and takes MIDI input. Not sure if it still works, but might help someone: https://github.com/AlexGaspar/piano-playground.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadAnother open source app that I’ve been using to practice is https://github.com/sightread/sightread
If I install the hosted .deb and run it though, then press a, s, d with a 5 second wait it's fine. If I push them after half a second, so while the previous note is playing, it goes very wrong. Is that supposed to happen?
a (C plays, wait 1 second, C still plays), s (after C finishes D plays, a long time later).
press a,s,d and it's C for about 3 seconds, then D and E together.
Is this just a bug with my desktop environment?
https://www.gnu.org/software/solfege/
[0] https://midi-speaker.com/
I'd suggest people really focus on their ear training though over visual feedback. Just play your scales through the circle of fifths -- set a metronome at 60, go for both hands, two octaves, parallel and contrary motion. Start with major and then move on to the three types of minor. The thing you're developing is internalizing the sound of the scales. Just picking out an F harmonic minor scale and getting a visualization I think is less fruitful for the long term.
Also, for triads, while it is super important to know what the quality of the chords are inside a scale (so that you can pick up your forms like a ii-V-I in any key), I think it's more important to practice the chords themselves. When I was taught, my teacher just had me pick a few keys every morning, and then practice the major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads, with their inversions. Within a week you'll have practiced all of them. Once he could call out any key and I could play them up and down with the metronome at a decent clip, we moved onto the 10 four part chords and did the same. And then did it again in open position. And then... there's always more!
For learning how the triads sit inside a key, I'd suggest playing the triad in the left hand and then playing up and down the scale so that you can start hearing the chord with the mode. So, Cmaj triad, play the C scale up/down, Dmin triad, play D dorian up/down, etc. At least that's how I was taught.