Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Using virtual Piano Practice Rooms on Discord Pinano Server

The Discord Pinano Server has piano practice rooms. We were discussing these in this thread and this thread.

First of all, what is Discord? Discord is a "proprietary freeware VoIP application and digital distribution platform designed for video gaming communities, that specializes in text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and in web browsers. As of May 2018, there are 130 million unique users of the software."

A number of pianists (also referred to as "painists" ) got together and created a piano server called the Pinano Server (note variant spelling) within Discord. The Pinano Server has multiple real-time piano channels where people talk about pianos, piano playing, classical music, non-classical music, etc. all in real-time both in text and by voice. As you can imagine, users of Discord are world-wide so this server has live discussions going on 24-hours per day.

Quite a few of the channels on the Pinano Server are dedicated as "practice rooms." You can go into an empty practice room and just practice your piano there. People may freely wander in and out of practice rooms to listen. There are also features to practice rooms such as practice room timers which you can use to track how much you are practicing over a period of time. There is also friendly competition (a leader board) to show how much different folks are practicing (those that use the practice timer).

As CadenzaVvi says, this is sort of like practicing in a conservatory. She pointed out in this thread that practicing in a Discord Pinano practice room adds some discipline to her practice. I am planning on starting to practice in a Pinano Server practice room to try to lessen my performance anxiety because when people can wander in and out and listen to you at any time, than I suppose I will just stop thinking about it after awhile.

Discord also hosts a piano recital every two weeks. Participants must register in advance. Past recitals can be heard on the Youtube "Pinano Discord" channel here. The last one was the Recital #21. Recital #22 is scheduled for January 12th and the registration page is here. As I had announced here, Discord Pinano just hosted an Internet piano competition. It'll be interesting to see the entries.

HOW TO USE DISCORD - The following is just a very brief instruction on how to use Discord and set up to practice in an empty practice room.

To do this, you will need a microphone for your piano, such as you might use to make a recording. Alternatively, you can also use direct audio such as from your piano or a VST, however, I will not discuss setting that up here.

You first download the appropriate Discord app here. Note, to use the full features of Discord, you will have to use the downloadable app version, and not only try to access Discord via the browser.

After installing the app on your computer, create an account on the Pinano Server by going here. Once you have created an account, this is the account you will use to log into the Discord app. On Mac OSX, the app looks like this:


Be sure your computer's privacy settings are set such that the Discord app can access your microphone. You can test this in the preference settings.

Go into a Discord Pinano practice room and start practicing.

If you have any difficulties, ask in this thread.

I only know Discord from gaming. This is neat It's not something I'll make use of, but I can see how it can be extremely helpful in some cases.

That's interesting, I might try it. I only know Discord from gaming too, and then only because we have a bridge from Discord to IRC.

I remember some musical friends from uni used to say "pinano" instead of piano. Is that a thing?

Thanks, Tyrone, for putting this together. I've been using Discord for awhile now for other reasons. I'll have check out some of the practice rooms and live recitals

Painist for pianist and pinano for piano are just examples of metathesis and epenthesis, respectively, in contemporary English. I find it interesting as neither can occur in morphologically blurred languages like my native one, although related mutations can occur instead.

The direct answer is, I suppose, it can be a thing if people want it to be a thing Pinano is more of a thing than painist.

I set up an account and saw chats and practice rooms, but didn't hear anything and wasn't sure how to use the practice room. (I guess I could look for tutorials or something but this seemed easier). Do I just go to an unused practice room and start playing? How do I know if anyone can hear it?

Looks interesting.

It's possible you don't hear anything simply because no one was playing (or speaking) in any of those rooms you visited. Can you hear any sounds at all from the Discord app? You can also type in the main chat room and ask some one to speak up and see if you hear them through their mic.

If you are on the Pinano Server now, go to the second practice room where Discord user coff is currently playing/practicing with two listeners. You can go there and see if you hear him playing/practicing.


Assuming your mic is accessible from Discord app, and that you haven't muted yourself in the Discord app (look for the microphone symbol right of your handle to see if it has a line through it), then yes, this is how it works.

To tune your mic for what others might hear from your pinano , you can create a dummy login from a tablet w/ earphones, login from the tablet, go to the same practice room as you are playing in with your main Discord account, and use it to help to adjust your settings and microphone. But this is already more sophisticated and elaborate than the bare minimum needed.

BTW, to give credit where credit is due, I entirely blame my own knowledge of Discord on PW member vervurka, as due to her suggestion, I myself tried it for the first time only 4 days ago, so I am a Discord baby myself

Tyrone - thank you for these side-tracks. I love language (although hardly a serious student of it) and found these links fascinating. Justifies my having spent these minutes on the forum instead of actually practicing...

Thanks, I must have been too late seeing your post because I didn't see coff anywhere (assuming I'm in the right place). I actually went to all the practice rooms that looked like they had someone there and didn't hear anything.
I must have something wrong, but I'm headed out now and will have to try again later.

I'm curious what's involved in getting my DP audio into the Discord app, if anyone who knows how to do that has time to spare.

Are you on Windows 10, Mac OSX, or something else? tablet?

Are you using a VST or just want to pipe the audio out of the sound generator in your piano into Discord?

Yeah, you missed coff, I guess. But many people on the server can probably assist you with your testing. If I'm around, I could assist. Sounds like you might be having a Discord app settings issue if you are hearing absolutely nothing from any of the channels.

Thanks for following up. I could use either my Mac or iPad, whichever would be easiest. The sound would be coming right out of my Casio Privia DP. I'd just turn on the sound, but I have roommates and my DP is currently in common space, so silent practice would be far more chill.

I think this would be easier to do on the Mac. So as I see it, the goal is to play the DP and have the audio out go to the Mac and feed into the Discord app and also feed into your headphones so you can hear your own playing. What model of DP is it? Does using the audio output of the DP shutdown the headphone port on your DP? Or can both be used at the same time?

Since I have a Mac, I want to test this myself since I'm interested as well, insofar as I would want to play in the middle of the night when my neighbors in my multitenant building are sleeping.

EDIT: Realized this would not be a good setup to use the headphone port on the DP since then you couldn't hear anything coming in from Discord. More thought needed.

I'm on Discord now. I set the output of the digital piano into the line input of the USB sound card, and use headphones out from the piano when playing. I was told to uncheck the audio advanced options. I wish I could hear what it sounds like from a listener perspective. I tried logging in with my phone, but it disconnects my voice on the laptop because it's the same user.

Nice! But can you hear what listeners in your practice room are saying while you are playing? If for example, I were to wander into your room and say, "Hey BSharp, is that the Liszt Sonata in B minor you're playing ?", would you hear me with your setup? Or only your DP?

It's a Casio Privia PX-330, several years old now (haven't played much in the past five years). Using the audio output doesn't shut down the headphone port, but as you said, then I can't hear from Discord. But I assume there must be some way around this if gamers are both playing and talking at the same time. Or would that mean virtual piano software is required? Thanks for taking on the question.

I know it can be done without a VST, and know how I can do it on Windows machine, since there, I can take the line-in and mix it with the output of an app (example: Discord) to send to my headphone using Windows itself. But I'm not sure how to do it on a Mac without something like a virtual audio cable, which I have, but entails an additional expense (although Soundflower is free, but I've never used that before). So I am experimenting a bit right now since I am interested in this question too...

I might be able to hear what others are saying. That would come out through the laptop speakers, so I might hear a little while using headphones