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

@Sol Finker It's easy but doesn't fully support the Musescore files. For example, sometimes I only get half of the fingerings. But all in all it works well enough for me. If you have any questions I'll try to help with my (rather limited) knowledge .

Besides Minced, Chopped and Whole, does PM have a practicing way to memorize a piece?
I admire people - beginners - who upload their videos playing pieces without using the score.

I never intentionally try to memorise a piece but in order to play it at a good level it is inevitable that I will play it so many times that it becomes second nature.

I'm currently working on 'Cannon in C' and I would imagine that it would take a skilled player to be able play this without practicing so much that it becomes ingrained in their psyche.

Although I glance at the music at a few places, it would be impossible for me to be able to play this proficiently without knowing it like the back of my hand.

I'm just green with envy of those who can play without score. But I'm used to reading and cannot imaging another way to play a piece.

Being a beginner at the piano I only memorized 3 little piano pieces so far but I know the problem of Sol Finker from the guitar for many years, where I also tend to be more a reader than a person who memorizes music easily. I know that some people are able to memorize music very quickly just by playing it but this involves (in my opinion) quite some theoretical knowledge about composition and a lot of experience. So this is my (admittedly very slow) approach:

1. I learn the piece with the score in front of me. At first at very very slow speed, line by line, till I feel really comfortable and confident before I speed up. The same principle like the minced/chopped thing is working in PM. By the time I reach the actual speed of the piece and I can play it without too much effort, I have already spend a lot of hours with it and most/all of the notes/finger movements are already stored in what is called 'muscle memory'. [At this stage of learning I try only to look at my hands when it is really necessary. I'm not sure, if this is important though. Maybe I'm just used to not looking at my hands from the guitar, where this is simply not comfortable and you never are able to watch both of your hands simultaneously anyway.]

2. I start over the same process, line by line (bar by bar if needed) and from very slow to fast but this time without looking at the score but rather watching my hands or closing my eyes and just listening to the sound. As before, I only speed up, when all feels naturally and effortless. I take very small steps, just aiming to learn 1 - 4 bars in a session and then putting it together with (some of) the parts I already know.

3. When I finally can play it out of memory the piece gets in my "repertoir" category. Which means I'll spend some minutes every day repeating it before or after I practice something else. I tend to forget really fast so it is important for me to keep reviewing for a longer period, when I want it to stay in my memory, which is a shame.

Because all of the above takes a lot of time (in my case) I found it fundamental to choose very carefully which pieces I want to learn at all in this manner. It needs to be something I really love, especially the longer the pieces get. It can become very frustrating, having to repeat something over and over again and over a longer period of time.

Just my 2 cents, I'm very curious about other people's approach in memorizing music as well.

Hi - I'm new here and reading this thread takes a while!

When you say Canon in C are you talking about the Level 10 version (there are two other easier versions)

I’m doing 5-C of method where each exercise is a separate chunk of the piece and exercise 20 is the piece in it’s entirety.

I’m not sure if it corresponds with a piece in the library or which level it would be but I’d be interested to know.

Edit: It looks like it’s the Level 6 version from the library.

Thanks

I was getting excited about having completed the Level 3 version :-)

I've recently started trying to improve my sight reading, and checked out Pianomarvel. My baseline seems to be around 450 according to the SASR scale. I wonder what level that roughly corresponds to, if someone could let me know that would be great. Also, do you guys think a paid subscription is a good idea?

The monthly fee is quite afordable IMO.
I think it would be a good idea browsing through different levels.
You can try starting at Method level 2 and Technique level 3 and going forward until you reach your zone of comfort/discomfort.

My frustration with this and other apps is they don’t give you very long for free to get a feel for how the lessons will be structured and flow from one day to the next. I know you can get 7 day trials so do I have to abuse those (buy and immediately cancel) to get a proper feel for them?

Piano Marvel I struggle from the start with the layout. whats the difference between method and technique? Which to do first? None of the apps seems to have a ‘drill’ or recommended structure to lessons - just want one that I can say I can do 30 mins a day, and it’ll give me the structure. Feels like I’m trying to decode the apps as much as learning the keys!

Simply Piano seems ok, and Piano Marvel gets a lot of recommendations so I’ll maybe start with those. Flowkey might be ok too. Yousician I’m not sure about all the colours - might help the ‘guitar hero’ player in me but does it obfuscate learning to read sheet music which might hold me back in the longer term?

You make me dither, but I think I started PM with a 30 day trial period...

Could you guys give me an idea of what the SASR scale is about? That's the main draw for me, I'm in it mainly for practicing sight reading. Does 400 correspond to grade 4?

I'm going through a very similar experience.
I've added a few more ideas though, to try to get past the memorization problem. E.g. I'm moving away from the excessively stringent routines I've used so far. I start from any phrase, including from the end of a section, LH only, RH only, RH + sing LH, LH + sing RH, and more.
High tempo of phrase playing.
And I have more ideas that I will try out.

All my books have been reset! OMG
The only ones that keep unaltered are Method and Technique (and the SARS score).

I have sent a request. I hope they have a backup and could restore my stuff.

Update today on PM Status 18/08: I have been told by developers that there are much better fixes in place for the “Server Error” as well as fixes for the reports section. The team has been working relentlessly to fix this. I will confirm by testing in a few minutes but feel free to let me know your experiences. We will be back to normal soon!!!!

They told me they're working on the bug that is causing the progress not to display.
I guess we have to wait.
Has anyone had the same issue?

Everyone had problems last week, but today they say everything is solved (Aug 20)

Indeed!
I have all my stuff back.
Happy Friday!

I’m a bit concerned now as my day streak of 471 days does not appear to have updated today.