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

I've always felt they the chose the name poorly. But I don't have any standing in the marketing world.

I take it you've actually used or seen someone use the app?

On PC windows you can resize with ctrl +/- I don't know about Mac. You can also print most songs as PDF.

We are not pianists (yet) we are beginners who want to learn how to read notes and understand music, no more. The rest will come later and then it will be sheet music and no online app anymore. Do not judge something you do not know.

I know, because I was once a beginner, and I kept a diary of what I did at every lesson (as I've posted about elsewhere). If you're already past laboriously counting spaces and lines from middle C to find every note that's not middle C, you should be reading from real music, and doing exactly what I said earlier, not doing it like some abstract computer game.

I was directing what I said to all learners - the earlier you start learning to sight-read like proper "pianists" (however you want to define them), the more competent you will be at it. My teacher taught me to do that from the third lesson (i.e. three weeks from starting lessons): you look through the whole piece from beginning to end, and take note of all the things I said earlier. Obviously, at three weeks, I wasn't playing any accidentals, everything was in C major and on white keys. In fact, I had to sight-read every piece that I was going to learn, in front of her, from then on: she plonked the music in front of me and watched what I did.

BTW, my first teacher also started me on aural skills right from the first lesson, because it complements sight-reading (getting familiar with intervals etc.). Of course, I was following the ABRSM syllabus and doing the exams, in which sight-reading and aural skills form an important part, right from Grade 1.

In case you are not aware, PM uses real music, although some of it is composed by its pianist creator. While it may be computer gam-ish, it is certainly not abstract in any of the usual senses of the word "abstract."

I believe you have perhaps switched PM with SightReadingFactory as SRF does not use real music and in this sense could be perhaps viewed as "abstract."

That said, I used SRF intensively and daily for a period of 4 weeks and I found the greatest improvement of my sight-reading skills since the earliest days of my piano learning last year. I completely did not expect this at all since the computer-generated "cruft" that SRF produces sounds cacaphonous to me. Yet, apparently, SRF does work - at least for me.

Of course it would work to some extent, considering how much time you spent doing it on a daily basis.

But how much better your sight-reading skills - and aural skills too, don't forget - might have been if you'd downloaded lots of simple pieces from IMSLP (or bought a few compilation books of easy original pieces by real composers) and used that for sight-reading practice, and spent the same amount of time on that instead? You'd also learn to associate intervals with the notes on the page and the keys on the piano, which you cannot if what you're sight-reading doesn't even sound like music, and the only way to know that you're playing a wrong note is because of a beep or blinking (or whatever).

Other benefits: you get familiar with the styles of various composers and eras, which will come in handy for when you start playing their more advanced stuff, and the many recurring patterns that abound in real music which will be the biggest factor that increase sight-reading speed in the years to come.

Not everyone has the ambition to become a concert pianist. You speak of interval reading, you first need to know what an interval is. And you'll learn the steps in PM, and the exercises are also focused on it, every time you get something of theory with it. And when a beginner downloads a piece of IMSLP, who is going to tell him/her what is wrong? There is Pm so ideal for, the tempo, the right notes, everything you do wrong you see. I try occasionally do sheet music, but it's hard because I don't know if I'm doing it right or not. Effort versus reward, that's what you get in PM. Someone with more ambition or a teacher will find out from themselves other pieces to learn. In any case, I don't need more than what PM has to offer. And like me there are many. Any his/her thing?

All of your above posts, bennevis, beg the question, why are you here? If you don't agree with the platform of Piano Marvel, why come in here and criticize those of us who enjoy it and find value in it?

I’m sure Bennevis hopes his comments are helpful. He and I both came from a time when there were no applications available, and sight reading meant picking up a large variety of music and playing it. Perhaps us ‘old school folks’ should try some of the new apps to see how they work and how they compare to the old ways. Bias for the way we learned is understandable as ‘it worked for us’, but it is not necessarily the only way. 😊 ....

There's never been an easier - and cheaper (as in no $€£) - time to just download lots & lots of free real music off IMSLP, and try it out, yet I hardly ever read of any near-beginner/learner in ABF actually just trying it for sight-reading practice. Or just reading through stuff (not necessarily sight-reading for the first time) for fun. Yes, fun: real music has melodies and phrases and interesting harmonies and textures. (BTW, almost everything is on YT too, if you don't have a teacher and want to check whether you're playing all the right notes in the right order).

It seems to me that the first thing people here think of is - what's the best app? (or what can I use on my computer screen?) - as if everything technology-driven and electronic is automatically better than anything else in the past.

Incidentally, I'd just returned from vacation where I used mental arithmetic everyday when shopping and eating to convert the local currency to £. Some others (the young ones) in the tour group never learnt their multiplication tables and relied totally on the built-in calculators on their mobile devices. Guess what happened when we went to stay for a few days in the mountains where there was no electricity to charge those devices?





Actually, I have tried various apps to learn a new language not too long ago. Were they boring as h*ll and how long did I stick each of them out? (Hint: less than 20 daylight hours).

Then I went to a language school in the country where the language is the main - and for most natives, only - language spoken. For two weeks, I lived, breathed, wrote and spoke (i.e. muddled through) the language. English (and Esperanto) was totally forbidden. By the end, I had a great holiday, made a lot of new friends from different countries (few of them English-speaking ones) and spoke the language well enough to venture out into the countryside and made myself understood by the locals, and even hold a decent conversation with them.

And I remembered how - when I was a kid - my parents took us on holiday to a country where no-one spoke our native language, and most days, I was thrown in with other kids in a 'children's camp' where we had lots of activities and games while my parents went sight-seeing with a tour group. Within a week, I'd picked up enough of the local language to chat properly with the other kids. When you live and breathe the new language, it's amazing how quickly you pick things up.

The same as when you live and breathe the language of real music: it's amazing how quickly (and effortlessly and enjoyably) you pick things up through discovery, rather than the chore of "learning". For those naysayers here - why not try it and see, rather than dismiss it just because there are no flashy graphics on a screen?

Technology has always been a blessing and a curse. But let's be honest, on the whole, it's been a blessing. Many professions would simply not exist today without the technology of the last 100 years. Mine wouldn't. Would yours?

It's just a tool. And 'tis a shoddy workman who blames the tool.

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I would hope you take your own advice: don’t be a naysayer until you’ve tried it’. Why don’t you try Piano Marvel before you assume our old fashioned way is the only one? Yes, it worked well but there may be other routes.

Actually, yes.

My profession is the oldest in the book. (No, I don't mean "the world's oldest profession" ).

Different strokes for different folks!

What works for you and what you like will differ from others.

I also learned to play music in a bygone era, but I’m also taking advantage of Piano Marvel. I love it. It helps me progress faster in relearning certain aspects, like reading notes faster and more accurately. It also helps me get the rhythm right, but rhythm has never been a weakness of mine.

And yes, I do have an RCM teacher, and yes, I do have lessons the old fashioned way. And I intend to sit RCM exams too. But Piano Marvel is a supplement to aid my weaknesses and since money isn’t an issue (here I mean the annual subscription price), I use Piano Marvel.

My teacher even knows I use online aids and she has no problem with it. Whether you like it or not technology will be incorporated into everything we do. Did you know there are online theory courses and exams offered by RCM now? If we can’t fight technology, why not give it a try and see if it’s useful? If yes hooray! If no then ditch it!

Eventually, Piano Marvel will not aid me in my learning much, when I get more advanced, but for now, it sure does speed up my relearning process and boy is it fun!

I would, if it's free (like IMSLP), just for the h*ll of it.

But I'm not paying good money for apps anymore, after my experience with teaching apps in the past which promised the world but delivered next to nothing........

I prefer to spend my money on new scores, which also benefit the (living) composers.

You can try it free for 30 days. You don’t get all the features but enough to evaluate it. Remember, it’s for beginners. If you come in as an intermediate or more, you may not find it the most useful.

Personally, I think the only thing that someone at bennevis's level will find interesting is the quantitative scoring of the Sight-Reading level. Since the software can test up to a DMA level of sight-reading, that might be interesting. Other than that, he would be too advanced to benefit much from PM.

Well then, I guess don’t bother lol!

Piano Marvel is for beginners. If you’re not a beginner, then of course you won’t find it useful.

I want to say duh but that’s just mean.