Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Other people do Piano Marvel?

Hope so, It is very annoying, the function of "prepare" is pointless in this way.

Yes, I could use a clock, but the thing is that I practice five or ten minutes at a time, whenever I have a break. So. I don't want to add up all those times, I just want a running daily total on the Lessons view. That will help me know if I have hit my day's goal without having to go to the Reports screen. It's not a big thing, but they are showing other minute totals on the Lesson view.

I don't understand well what you meant by "Lesson view" is that method? What I have done myself to keep up the practice time; I made myself as both a teacher and a student. It's puzzling in Marvel interface, but I see extensive numbers/time/% of everything I do in "reports".

I don't have myself set as teacher. Can you explain what setting yourself as teacher does that just being student doesn't do?

It's actually the LESSONS tab on the iPad app. It appears to the right of the METHOD and TECHNIQUE trophy cases. On the upper right in LESSONS there is February Minutes: and Practice Goal. I would like Daily Minutes: added up there. There is also a Set Goal button up there.

Sorry don' have an iPad. I understand that the app is still in development, so they will certainly be happy to hear your feedback.

I have no idea what the difference is. I only know that I get extensive reports with lots of details, and once a month a popup that says I should do a SASR test.

Ok, I added myself as a teacher of myself, although it makes me a bit nervous to have someone watching over me like that.

What are in these extensive reports? I looked in the Reports tab but I did not see any differences.

No idea on the teacher question. Mine had finally agreed that we would use PM as a tool just before she died. We never got the software set up on her machine.

I get really frustrated when I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be learning from something. Can anyone have mercy on me and have a look at technique 3-D, exercise 14? Is this piece in F minor, but for some reason the key signature is left off? Then of course they decided to use Roman numerals in the bass cleff after I finally started getting the feel for what the chords look like on the score. It seems like a stretch to me, though it wouldn't be the first time I was dragged kicking and screaming into the path of righteous pedagogy...

I'm glad you said this. I have had this problem before, and I thought maybe I was playing too lightly, or worse, that my keyboard was wearing out. I mean, it wasn't an expensive keyboard to begin with but I didn't want to make a huge investment until I could show that I was dedicated. I had been thinking that maybe I needed to tell my husband that he needs to buy me a new one. But now I'm thinking maybe it's not necessary right yet.

Oh, and by the way, for anyone that might be interested in purchasing anything from the Music Marvel store (you know you can buy the method books to accompany the Method module and books to some of the other things in the Library), they are having a sale until February 15th (20% off). Josh's Live Stream (<-- YouTube link) last night was about the sale and about a new Intermediate Love Song bootcamp that is newly available.

Since Josh's last Live Stream, I have been working on the Ed Sheeran song, "Perfect" in the Easy version. It's coming along, and still working on Level 4 Method lessons.

I give up on technique but I can translate the roman numerals.

I = First or 1
IV = Fourth or 4
V = five or 5
V7 = five-seven 5-7

You can print the books When I try playing scales in prepare, the "hanging" keys or driving me mad....

Yeah, I get that, and they use lower case for minor - i, iv, v7, etc. It's something that some of the guitar players I know use, and they can't read a score. So it's good for me, though difficult and frustrating at times.

I'm staying with technique AND method, even if it kills me.

Bravo.

By the way, I'm new to the program. Am I supposed to work Method and Technique in parallel? A level method with A level technique, then B, C, etc? Should Method come first or Technique? Does it matter?

Optimally, you are supposed to work them in parallel. I used to do 5 lessons of one and then 5 of the other. The order doesn't really matter as long as you are more or less in sync (meaning if you are in 2-C for example on Method then you are also somewhere in 2-C on Technique, approx.). This is optimally, and how they intended it to go, but as Sarah65 pointed out, this has to work for you. So if you get out of sync, or even decide to ditch one or the other of Method or Technique, then don't beat yourself up over that, better to make forward progress instead of getting frustrated and quitting entirely. For the same reason, it is easy to get caught up in chasing 100% success on every lesson. That's OK, but if you get stuck at 95% on a certain lesson, better to move on then to spin your wheels in frustration.

Some people think Technique is a little harder than Method, especially at the higher levels since they focus on technique, accuracy of tempo/timing, and stuff like scales, arpeggios, and chords. I personally think they are of comparable difficulty. However, if I were to do it all over again, I would add to my PM lessons some Youtube piano technique videos, since PM is so light on "real" technique (other than the scales/arpeggios/chords I spoke of earlier). For example, this video is an excellent starting piano technique video to give you an idea of what "real" piano technique consists of. After 4 months of PM, I started piano lessons with a teacher last year, and I was directed to start over again because my piano technique was so bad. I caught back up to my original level after a few weeks, but I think I could have avoided the back tracking if I had paid more attention to the youtube videos on piano technique.

I actually had an exercise where I got stuck on 95% or so. I burned up a LOT of time before I moved on. One day when I was something like a level and a half beyond it I went back to check it. I breezed right through it.

It'll never happen but I'd love to see a button that brings up a textual description of what information the lesson is trying to impart. Sometimes I just don't get it. And there have been times I'd kill for an 'I surrender, show me all the fingerings' button, though that might be quite a bit of clerical work for someone.

Overall, I think that for every time this software leaves me feeling burned down, there are 20 times it teaches me something that motivates and helps.

Tom,

Have you looked at the corresponding method book? There is usually additional information there about what the lesson is intending to focus on.

The .PDFs? They do have a little something in them every now and then, don't they?

Those were just 2 examples of something in the software that frustrates me. But I've been around long enough to know that the world isn't going to change for me and to suspect that the rest of you might suffer if it did!

One thing, for example, I saw in the PDFs is that they start to teach pedaling. PM itself doesn't support showing any pedaling, but the PDFs teach it. There are lots of other differences too.

But something I'm wondering about is the new special sale I received an email about. One of the things identified as being on sale are the method books associated with the course. Does that mean the PDFs are now no longer free?

I remember working with my teacher on one of them and I couldn't imagine what 'Leo' meant. Turned out to be a stylized representation of 'Ped', doh!

Aren't the PDFs incomplete? Maybe if you buy one you get all of the exercises.