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Finally nailed exercises 1 to 7 of Method Level 6A based on, but not the same, as Pretzold's Minuet in G minor. Its all about trills, and the exercise puts them in all the un-natural places it could find. I am trying to record the proper thing for the 40 pieces a year club, but the real trills are causing me issues.

The next set of exercises look, right now, as an impossible wall to climb. In essence it is Bach's Prelude No 1 (BWV 846) - but its played at speed and there is no practice modes at all. I have requested them from Piano Marvel, as the only way I can see of achieving this is to learn in small and slow chunks.

I've tried uploading this as my own song from Musescore so I can break it down, but I've got this weird problem (with this and with another uploaded piece of music) in that the tempo in each hand plays differently, causing them to slowly drift out of sync. Again I've e-mailed Piano Marvel about the issue, but not had any reply yet.

It looks like its available in the Library. Have you tried practicing with that one? It does seem pretty odd that they didn't make it available as chunked in the lessons themselves, though.

Piano lesson with my teacher today - briefly discussed this and I was playing the trills wrong - trying to fit one extra note in. Apparently (according to my teacher) it depends on when in history the music was written as to what the trill symbol actually means.

So, will go back and try it again with the correct trills.

Re Prelude

I'll go look and see. But...

Got to start a new piece with my teacher ("Cool" ABRSM grade 5 piece). Rhythm is very tricky, needs lots of counting so as to hit notes on the offbeat. Piano Marvel is going to have to take a back seat whilst I get this underway.

Well, I made it through the Level 1 boot camp in the sight reading challenge. A little disappointed with myself at only an 80%. Guess I need to work harder.

Interestingly I am actually using Piano Marvel to learn this piece. On Thursday I sat down with Musescore and entered (with the help of my piano) the entire score of Cool into it. Then I tried to load it into Piano Marvel, but for some reason it would only load the first 17 bars. So I contacted the Piano Marvel support team and explained the issue, and they looked into it, discovered some problems and redid the score for me using Finale on Windows.

Problems they fixed were

• Grace notes are made as a very short note in a separate voice at the end of the bar before
• Tied notes across bars have to be in the same voice in each bar
• Separate voices in a bar can't start near the end without the correct number of rests before hand (Musescore can start a voice mid bar, but Piano Marvel shifts to the beginning of the bar)
• The piece has an 8va sign for the last few notes, with might have been the problem which caused Piano Marvel not to load the whole piece (they deleted my last bar and re-entered it - but forgot to add the 8va - more below)

They loaded the piece up for me, but also e-mailed me back the corrected .mid and .xml file

When I checked what they had done it wasn't perfect, in that the last 4 notes didn't have the 8va sign and therefore were an octave too low and they had lost the swing time (which is a key component for the first 90% of the music, when it reverts to the standard steady beat)

So I tried correcting it with Musescore - that just managed to screw the .xml files up again so that the voicing and tied note problems mentioned above appeared in the piece

In the end, looked at the .xml file they had sent me in a text editor - worked out where the last 4 notes were and manually altered the .xml to play those notes higher. I also produced the .mid file with the correct swing in it using Musescore.

I have now loaded these revised files into Piano Marvel and then created the chopped practice sessions breaking down the piece natural 4(ish) bar sections at 60, 90 and 144 bpm and now started playing the piece in Piano Marvel!

And so far I have scored 100% on the chopped exercises for bars 1-5, 5-9, 1-9 and 10-13 at all three tempos, so well on my way!

Wow, akc42, that sounds very technical and complicated!

Yes it was a bit technical and complicated - but having been a computer programmer for the last 56 years (since I was 11 years old) it doesn't phase me anymore. I must say wonderful help from Piano Marvel support and a fantastic end result

Yes, Piano Marvel does have wonderful support. I've had a few email exchanges with the support staff and the owner, Aaron Garner, and they've been very receptive, communicative, and helpful, including on an outage that happened Friday night. One of their support people told me about an amazing "undocumented" feature which has really helped me tremendously.

Do the other Piano Marvel users though notice an occasional lag at the start of the metronome? I've had the pieces get out of sync on my Windows 10 machine where the position pointer, background music, and the metronome are a fraction of a beat out-of-sync -- maybe 10% of the time. PianoMarvel did send me some beta software to try out and see if it resolves this, and having been in IT 35 years, I have an aversion to anything that is "beta", but I think I will go try it soon. (I've also sent a PM on this forum to the other PianoMarvel users on a related issue.)

I have a self-imposed hurdle (because I'm OCD), I don't move on from a piece in the system until I am error-free two consecutive attempts. Even a single error, and my "counter" resets to zero. haha. As PianoMarvel users know, you can be 100% and still have errors. I first encountered Arabia on Wednesday. I finally was error-free twice in a row at the full speed version yesterday. Probably took 3 hrs of practicing. And I'd like to conclude with "may I never see it again"

Has anyone found a live human teacher that uses PianoMarvel for paid "distance learning" lessons? I went to the list of PianoMarvel teachers on the website, and it seems most are inactive now.

There is a Piano Marvel group on Facebook but there doesn't seem to be much activity there and only 247 members. I also saw a Piano Marvel Teachers group which does seem to have current activity. Perhaps you could connect with a teacher there.

Thanks GidgetKeys. I took a quick peek at the latter Facebook page and it is clear that I'd only need to post a note there and there would be teachers offering lessons. I may do that after I get through Level 6 since even at level 6, this would be something like early intermediate I suppose.

In fact, if anyone does have any idea of what level one would be at when one finishes Piano Marvel Level 6 Method/Techniques, for example on the ABRSM or RCM scale, I'd love to know.

I think the issue of how far Piano Marvel can take you is confusing - and may be also why the teachers group is minimal

Firstly, despite what they say, PianoMarvel is good for Rhythm and Accuracy, but is useless at Dynamics and Expression. You can't introduce rubato into a piece because you would immediately drop out of sync.

So whilst it is good at motivating beginners to learn the basics and do some of the technical exercises, to actually play expressively a piece of music is not really possible. I can't remember when I did my grade 3 exactly what it was like, but what I do have is the piano books that my teacher was using at the time (about 1961). She didn't use pencil as teachers do these days, but a fountain pen with bright green ink. These books are plastered with Dynamic Markings written by her, so I am pretty certain that by the time you get to that level you are formally expected to put expression in your playing.

My guess is teachers might initially think PianoMarvel is great, but soon come to the realisation that it cannot be everything once a pupil has reached a certain level and that would be fairly early on.

On the other hand, scales arpeggios and chords - the staple of the Technique Sections - if you look at the last exercise it has scales in every key. I think that is partially grade 5 territory (although there are a few other grade 5 technical requirements like contrary motion scales).

My own experience is that I have a teacher who is teaching me to play music - I am using Piano Marvel to improve getting my fingers to do what my brain wants them to.

This was my sense which is why I thought long term what this system would be best for is putting up my own exercises, such as Czerny, Hanon, Bartok, etc. and playing those to develop stuff like finger independence, that doesn't require dynamics (or not much anyways). I know the Library already has some of these exercises, but I've been thinking about putting in a lot more. I think this tool could be very good at improving piano techniques (at least those that don't involve dynamics).

I do not use Piano Marvel, but it does sound great for developing accuracy in Notes and rhythm. However, just some unsolicited advice, FWIW: Structure your piano practice where you are also heavily including developing dynamics and phrasing by playing music independent of a system.

There are many ways to develop accuracy by also using repertoire such as Bach for independence and voicing. ..... Mozart for precision, etc. No program required and you gain by also developing musicality. Weight your practice time accordingly.

I see "Arabia" in 3B Methods being called out, but does anyone else feel that 130bpm version of "Low Bridge, Everyone Down" is a bit fast for 3B? I've probably played measures 27 through 36 about 50 times to be able to get my fingers moving fast enough! Or is it only me being a snail?

I have been trying to find such software to practice sight reading but unfortunately it seems that piano marvel requires a keyboard and won't work with an acoustic. Any alternatives? So far I have been trying yousician and it looks ok but I would be curious to know about others experience.

I find everything in Marvel too fast, the full speed version then. And yes you have to move your fingers so fast that you don't actually remember what you are doing (your brains) and I think it is the intention that you play on autopilot, finger memory or whatever they call it.

Agreed! I actually did manage to get Arabia to 💯%. But I'm still stuck on that fast version of Low Bridge. It's frustrating that I can't get it. I'm close. I printed the sheet music but it's notated for 8va and for a beginner it kind of throws me off when I'm used to the app working in the lower octave.



Micael K. - I think Simply Piano and Flowkey might both work with acoustic pianos by "listening" but I don't have much experience with either so not sure if either has much in the way of a sight-reading feature.

Its only one hand!

Practice it a lot at the slower tempo - to the point were you absolutely know which note comes next and which finger you are going to play it with, in fact when you fingers start to move before you even think about it. Particularly note in the middle of measure 32 you transition from C position to A position, by playing the B with 2nd finger coming over the thumb.

In 5E you get to play the accompaniment here is my attempt

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