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I did not think of it that way, but I think that makes a lot of sense. LOL.

I'm still finding it's a good augmentation to my paper music.

Pros:
- Helps me keep track of what sections I'm working on, and which need work.
- Keeps me "honest" with my tempo and rhythm in a way that even metronome work can't do.
- The sight reading tools (the SASR as well as going through the
method/technique/repertoire/boot camps.)
- As I play mostly classical, it's been fun to have a library of other genre's available that I wouldn't buy for myself.

Cons:
- You can't make notations on the scores.
- You can't change fingering without going through a whole process of uploading a new xml and midi that you've adjusted the fingering on an external program.
- The included scores often expand ornamentation in a different way than I play it, or sometimes leave ornamentation off completely.
- Included scores often miss repeats
- Included scores sometimes have tempos that are WAY incorrect.

As to the cons, some of them (fingering, tempo, repeats, ornamentation) can be overcome by uploading your own scores, but to be honest, editing the score in an engraving program to make it exactly the way I want it is time I'm not willing to spend. Especially for things like fingering which may change as I learn the piece and figure out better ways to finger.

At this point, for repertoire I'm working on in my lessons I have the sheet music open alongside PM so I can make notes and look at my fingerings while I drill on passages. If I'm playing the whole piece, or large sections, sometimes I'll just put the book over my computer (it's a MS Surface, which sits nicely on my music desk.)

All in all, cons aside, it's a worthwhile tool, and I got the year subscription as I think I will get value out of it as a supplement to my lessons.

I've discussed grace notes, in particular, with the developers and they are working on supporting those.

Hello, Josh Mills here with Piano Marvel. Just wanted you to know that I have spent some time adding Grace Notes to Rondo Alla Turca tonight. I would be more than happy to send the files to you! 😊 Regardless, happy practicing with the Mozart piece! Here to help if I can!

Josh Mills
(email: josh@pianomarvel.com)

Hi, welcome to PW, Josh.

Can I ask you if grace notes are now working in general? And do the current version of MuseScore work with PM?

Thanks for the offer Josh. I would love to give it a try. I'll PM you my e-mail address

One other thing I am struggling with is the speed. I know the concert pianist versions are played at a pretty high tempo, but I am unlikely to get close for a while yet.
I have often wondered if it would be better, at least as an option for PM to
a) Allow you traverse the minced practice versions at the slowest speed first but for each section, before then going through the faster speed, and
b) Allow the user to take a piece from the library and then define their own exercises (including tempo).

Id be really interested in that too. "Finale" for me here in the UK costs £600. There is no way I could ever justify that cost

I did try and upload Bach/Marcello BWV 974 Adagio using Musescore and it wasn't successful, The sounds and the music were never in sync was one problem.

The other problem (which is another general issue with PM) is that the full speed temp is actually around 32 (but really needs to be expressed as 64 to the 8th Note) and the minimum tempo allowed is 30. Not much room for making slow practice sections.

You can go into the settings and change the tempo up and down if you need as well as highlight certain sections that you need to focus on without needing to repeat the entire exercise. Pretty sure Josh has shown how to do those things in some of his livestreams.

And for anyone who doesn't know, you can go on Piano Marvel's YouTube channel and watch the livestreams that Josh and others have done.

Good to see you here as well Josh. It really is helpful to have someone who works for the company be so involved in these forums (as well as our Facebook group).

Lana

Nice to have Josh here!

So, I gave up on every having any of my suggestions implemented a long time ago. So I will pose this as a question. Do others ever get to an exercise where you'd give $100 to be able to press a key and see what fingerings a more expert player would use? I don't think there's anything wrong with having someone think for himself but it would sure be nice to be able to get a sanity check after spending a morning figuring them out on my own. There are plenty of fingerings in the software but I keep hitting places where I don't know what to do and it is somehow assumed that I will just figure it out. Or maybe this is deliberate? If so, put me down as not a fan.

That's what I meant a time ago, I feel like you're left after the end of level 3 in PM to your destiny. No explanation, brief fingering, no sample videos, in short, look for it yourself.

Hello Josh, glad to have you here, its Vera Have you read the post from Chrispy on this page? I wanted to copy and paste it for you, there are useful tips for the team.

Hello!

Grace notes are about 70-80% done. More advanced grace notes getting graded in Assess Mode is what we are currently working on now; but every grace note works in prepare mode!

There are some grace notes that causes PM to freak out and not load the score; mainly grace notes that are 8va. These are also being worked on. But I would say the majority of grace notes do great. The grace notes in my recital piece (Haydn's Eb Variations) worked well and the Rondo All Turca loaded great without crashing.

Lastly, from my tests, I have seen great success with Musescore uploads. The only thing that needs to be addressed with Musescore currently is that you must delete the tempo/metronome marking. If you do not, than the staves sill be out of sync.

Hope this helps! Good to be here!

Musescore 2 has really been having no issues that I have found when using it to export songs into PM. You just have to make sure that the tempo/metronome marking is not in the score or else the staves will be out of sync. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Don't give up! We listen and value all the suggestions that we get! I have heard some really great ideas from customers over the past year and some have been integrated. Others have not, but that doesn't mean they never will be! We just have literally so many things that we are trying to do and try our best to prioritize the items in a way that benefits everyone. Your voice matters and the more we hear from customers, the more it helps us see how to improve our software and what to focus on.

This is a great question, I am so glad you asked it! I made a video that shows how to copy songs from Piano Marvel's public library so that you can edit their slicings/speeds. I really hope this helps you! 😊 https://youtu.be/hvPUnEFiNF0

Hi Josh (or anyone else),

If I have sheet music from a book, and want to upload that into Piano Marvel for learning, how do I go about doing that? From the little research I’ve done, I think it requires manually creating a digital version first? Sounds like a time consuming process?

Yes, I use Musescore 2.3.2 right now Josh. I was wondering about Musescore 3.0.5 though. It sounds like PM still can't import scores from 3.0.5. Is that right?

You need Photoscore then you can scan your pages and edit them in Musescore and then uplaod in Marvel. If it is not too large, you can manually enter the notes in Musescore (there you will learn something) and then export as MIDI and musixml. And then upload it in PM. Time consuming, yes, but great help to learn.

I use StaffPad to write up my pieces because it allows me to write the notes using a stylus. StaffPad requires a Microsoft Surface tablet, but those are pretty cheap these days, around $399, I think. StaffPad is only $70.

I have run into some trouble exporting directly from StaffPad to PM so I export musicXML and import that into a free version of MuseScore where I add fingerings and then export MusicXML and Midi to import into PM.

Here is Microsoft’s introductory video for StaffPad. I think StaffPad is the most magical program I have ever used. I tried scanning programs once and was thoroughly disheartened with the amount of notes I had to fix. I would hope the programs have gotten better.

Thank you Sarah65 and LarryK!

I think I will first try manually inputting into Musescore first, since it’s free, and my song choices are really simple and short at my current level.

HOWEVER, StaffPad seems amazing! My husband has a Surface Pro so that is “free”, sort of. I can see how I will enjoy using StaffPad, especially if my song choices get more difficult and longer.