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I just finished writing a full review for Pianoforall on my blog (after spending several weeks going through the whole course). You can check it out here: http://www.pianoonlinemusic.com/pianoforall-review/

I hope to review some more similar products in the near future.

Funnily enough this is the teaching method that I'm using to learn piano, as well as Synthesia or video tutorials for specific pieces.

Robin, the author, is very reachable and helpful and really goes over the top to help his students.

The videos in this system are like having a teacher by your side, everything is well explained and you can see that you do progress in your learning, which makes you want to continue the method. The sound clips are also very helpful, and as well as traditional music sheets there is letter notation, which is very helpful as I'm dyslexic and have problems with sight reading.

His English is very clear so even though Enlgish is not my first language I can easily follow his videos.

For me it's definitely worth its price, and even more.

It sounds like Robin has a pretty good game plan. The guy pictured in the first testimonial at the bottom of the page is and has been a very active member of PianoMagic for at least two years.

I say make use of any and everything that works best for you. PianoMagic has had very good members move to Sudnow, etc. and also had very good players come in from Sudnow, etc. to PianoMagic.

I am buying his course this week! Maybe we can keep posting about how we find it?

I didn't know about PianoMagic. Obviously I'm very interested in any system that allows to play without sight reading as that is my main problem.

Will definitely keep an eye on it, thanks for the info.

Yes, I agree that it would be a good idea to keep a post open for people to update their progress or lack of it regarding a particular teaching system.

I found out about PianoMagic 6 yrs ago right here at PW a month after I bought a keyboard and just turned 60. I don't believe Pianoforall was around then, but within a few weeks at PM, the basis for Mike's method just clicked. Although the forums over there are not as active right now (Mike's been away some on other matters), I still watch new people come aboard and get it faster than I did. The "playing by ear is a gift thing" is way overplayed imo. I suspect most everyone can if they find the right method to get themselves on track on how it's done.

Rerun, many thanks for your views. Would love to hear you playing!!! I'll continue with Piano4All as I already have it and -so far- find it easy to follow and can see progression. But will probably go for PianoMagic too when I finish, especially as it seems that improvisation is quite strong in that system.

I had resigned myself to be a mere copying monkey, because as well as being dyslexic I simply have no musical ear, but as you say, finding one's own method to get things done is the most important thing... in life, I wouldn't say only with piano.

If MagicPiano explains how to improvise with chords in order to get a decent sound or how to detect the chords used in most songs it is definitely something interesting.

Never have recorded a great deal, but I'll see if I can knock some of the rust off three of these fingers and pull a medley or something together pretty soon.

If I can pull the melody in the bridges together better, I'd post a bit of a Joplin tune I'd never heard before ... it's been a little tricky.

Steve thanks for your blog- didn't notice that last time. Had a read- buying this course tomorrow! I think it is just what I'm looking for!

Great Edwardian. I looked through a few of your posts, and it seems that you have at least some piano playing experience. I'm curious to hear your opinion on the course.

Also, you might want to keep an eye on the free video lessons I'm giving in my blog. I'm going through Fur Elise right now - I'm guessing you can already play at least the first movement? But if you don't know the other 2 movements I'll be going through them very carefully starting in about a week.

http://www.pianoonlinemusic.com/blog/

Hello Steve- I have just started pianoforall this evening and am on page 27. I am very impressed with it so far- love his note finder chart ( which I will print out tomorrow and put on my piano's music stand) and his ideas to remember the C family chords are great! I do have some piano playing or rather plonking experience- can sight read a tiny bit and know a bit of theory- did the Coursera course on Beethoven's sonatas- it was brilliant! I've also had some piano lessons.

Nooooo I cannot play Fur Elise!

I wish! I shall have a look at your blog though. Fur Elise is in the pianoforall Classics book- in fact there's quite a bit of Beethoven in there. As you might have guessed I LOVE Beethoven.

I am a huge Beethoven fan as well. If you don't know Fur Elise, I recommend that you start learning it right away (you can easily get started with just 5 minutes a day, so it shouldn't take away from the Pianoforall course). Here's my first video lesson:



All 11 lessons can be found on the lessons page of my website: http://www.pianoonlinemusic.com/lessons/

Note that the first 3 lessons will teach you the whole first movement.

I love Fur Elise! I was about to post I could never play that right now Steve, then I had a look at your video and maybe I could as you show it really well. Then I remembered I have a beginner's version of it in one of my music folders and I did have a go at it ages ago.I did manage the first few notes...and I also have vague recollections of actually finding the first few notes of it by ear once- out of the blue, wasn't even thinking about Fur Elise.
It's very kind of you to put up those videos Steve, thanks!
I am still doing other piano stuff as well as pianoforall- and learning some Beethoven is very welcome! In fact the first piece of sheet music I "learned" was a one paged version of Ode To Joy.

I'm happy to hear you love the great Beethoven too! Join us on Beethoven discussion on the thread I started about him! Do you know much about him as a person? I am reading about him- he was fascinating.How I'd love to go back in time and see him at those piano improvisation contests he did in his early days in Vienna.I have read accounts of people who saw him and he sounded epic!Of course he always won.

I purchased PIANO FOR ALL about 2 years back. I began daily work on it about 1.5 years back.

It was $39. It is definitely worth $39... and a great deal more.

Though sold as another "miracle cure" for beginnerism, it really is just a solid text that is very well written and explains a lot that all other music books and courses (I've purchased or come across) don't explain well.

It starts as a "dummies" book by teaching you how to hold your hands and what key is what, etc. VERY basic. Then it quickly matures into exercises teaching chords in all the keys, rhythm exercises that form the basis of all popular music, and then branches wildly into Jazz, Classical, Rock, Ballads, and full exercises in all scales.

While it won't play the piano for you, you'll soon discover you have to do that. It will aid you in achieving a LOT of skill rather rapidly, and it will compact and simplify all the basic and intermediate theory for you. When you get through all 10 books (and the 11th bonus), you will have a greater understanding of piano than most people going through 3 or 4 years of learning merely with a teacher. It will probably take you 2 years of 2-hours/day practice to thoroughly learn the material and master the studies.

I recommend it.

When I started it, I was beyond half of the first book. The first three books took me no time to get down. The fourth and fifth began to weight me down. I still want to go back and attack the 7th, 8th, and 10th books with further effort. The last book is every key, every major scale, every arpeggio, and other exercises in the 12 majors and 12 minors (if I remember right).

There are nice video examples included. The pages are large pint and simple to grasp. You will learn some very nice, often simplified, tunes. Usually he merely refers to pop pieces and gives you something similar to play. Classical pieces are originals, naturally, and nothing too intense. PFA is a great learning tool for beginners to intermediates.

I'd say it's a bargain Rusty!Robin is a genuine man and repleid to my emails fast too! I wrote and said I have just begun it and like it very much. And I'm having fun as well!





Yes, I thought it'd take that time to work though it. I'm also working through Steve's Fur Elise tutorials and am doing quite well with it!





I think it is very comprehensive and that's what I was lokking for. Yeah go back and finish the books Rusty!



I love the classical book- had a look at it- wanting to get to that is spurring me on! I will work through each book methodically and not move on to the next one until I know it.

Thanks for the excellent discussion here about Piano for All. I have been sitting on the fence regardng PianoMagic since I wanted to self teach solo piano. WIth my minimal guitar background I am able tp pick out melodies and play the melody lines.

What will PianoMagic or PianoforAll offer me to dress up my melody lines ?

The response from Mike just referred to 12 numbered lessons but no specific details . Can someone describe the scope of the Pianomagic contents in those 12 lessons that youget for the membership price ?

Hey EM, I'll give it a try ... If you don't take the time to learn the nuts and bolts of Level I (the first 12 lessons), you'll probably struggle with all the great stuff which follows. Level I takes someone who's never seen a piano to a point where you're not only playing tunes by ear that you know but you're starting to "learn how music thinks", a phrase I believe Mike coined. For me, it even changed the way I thought about music.

A big part of Level one is getting your ears tuned up and familiar with what people who already play by ear think of, listen for, etc. as they play by ear ... and I'm not talking about just melody, but harmony and rhythm too. Rhythm is a hoot I might add.

Level II, really gets you into the thick of learning/playing rhythm patterns like short arpeggios, 3/4 and 4/4 boom chucks, rolling 10th boom chucks, 10ths, etc. and your ears start recognizing which ones work nicely for which tune you're going to play.

I would say that somewhere thru Level II members are already sitting down and playing many tunes they already know as one pops into their mind, at least that was my experience and there are far more talented people than me doing Piano Magic.

If you want to play classical, I'd say don't do Piano Magic, hire a teacher. There's a forum at PM that was a huge help for me when I started 6 yrs. ago and members still help others to this day when you need it. Mike is very easy to reach by phone or email if you get stuck on something also.

If I missed something, let me know.

Assuming MOST of you run this in Windoze, what settings are you using to get adobe reader to play the movie clips ?

Right now on Windoze the sound clips play fine (once I allow the trust thing) but the movies don't.
The movies play fine via quick time if I double click on them in the folder, so I know they are OK.
I have tried setting adobe reader to use quick time plug in, still doesn't work.

On Linux (preferred OS) the movies play fine from the books, but the sound clips are just noise.

Better yet, what setting in Linux gets the sound clips to play ?

re my previous post;
I am (more or less, smirk) past most of what this method does, but other family members had an interest and it was clunky to have to open the pdf file in adobe reader and the .mov file in quick time - JUST BECAUSE adobe reader wouldn't/couldn't and was getting errors when trying to play them.

So I contacted Robin for help with the settings, gave him the version numbers of all programs involved, etc. and his suggestion was that I had an old version of PFA.
SPEEDY response BTW, within about an hour IIRC.

Well,,, SURE ! it has been out there for a long time, most of this topic is OLD, adobe reader and quick time have had MANY version updates, etc. and backward compatibility may have slipped.

There is an upgrade available for US$12.95 and the movies are SO MUCH BETTER that it is worth getting.
The pdf files have a date of 2014-04-03, which is long after most of this topic, so some of the comments on the method before that date don't apply to the version currently being sold.

The camera shots are from directly above Robin's hands and there is a superimposed image of another keyboard that the notes light up on.
This is properly "scaled"(pun, but I mean in length and width) to match Robin's keyboard, i.e. the key sticks line up.
It probably helps a lot to see the actual notes light up if there is ever any doubt.
I know that I have had trouble with some other videos when for example a ring finger curls under the middle finger when the hand is rolled out.

There is a claim that much of the material has been revised/improved as well, I can't vouch for that as I only downloaded it yesterday.
About 1.4Gig, so buy the DVD if you have a SLOW line.

R_B, I had the same problem with playing the video clips from within the PDFs, on at least one of my computers, but it worked on others, as far as I remember.

Some examples of solution - first make sure you have the latest Adobe Reader *, or install another PDF viewer. Foxit Reader worked for me.

* Edit - Now I remember opening the clips worked in an old Adobe Reader, but not a new one!

Although I actually prefer to view the video clips by themselves, just by having the video folder open in file explorer. These security warnings, when opening an embedded file in PDF documents, always scare me!

I also emailed Robin and he told me about the new videos. Nevertheless, my gripe is not with the quality of the video files, they are usable.

My gripe is rather with myself! Lack of discipline, lack of motivation. I'm trying to regain both.