Learning to Play Piano – There’s An App For That!
At this point in my life, there aren’t many things that I set out to accomplish and haven’t done. There’s one thing that has eluded me: learning to play piano. I’ve taken lessons several times over the years, but never stayed with it for more than a few months. All told, I had about a year’s worth of study, but the unfinished goal of learning to play was always in the back of my mind.
I’d looked at piano learning apps in the past, but few did what I wanted because they were based on using an onscreen keyboard. Any app that requires me to play on the device’s little keyboard or plug in a midi connection was disqualified from my list. In August of this year, I looked again.
Bingo! Simply Piano by JoyTunes was exactly what I wanted.
The Simply Piano app runs on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. While you can plug in midi-capable keyboards, the brilliance of the Simply Piano app is that it listens to you play and guides you to play the correct notes or chords. You set your mobile device on the keyboard and read the music while the device listens to what you’re playing. It teaches you the basics of reading music and has you practice with familiar songs of many styles. You can take the first lesson and play a few songs for free, but you need a subscription to advance. I only had the app for one day before I signed up for the six-month subscription. I pulled out an old iPad that had been gathering dust, and it is now dedicated to helping me learn to play.
The Simply Piano app is incredibly effective at teaching and reinforcing learning. I have learned more in a few weeks than I did in months with my last teacher. The app motivates me to practice, and the variety of songs keeps the learning interesting. There are even three new “5 Minute Workout” pieces every day that give me a quick review of older material. My sight-reading has improved, though I still find the sight-reading lessons to be difficult. I’m blessed to be married to a musician and he fills in music theory as I’m learning the piano basics.
What’s the down side? The app doesn’t know if you’re using the wrong fingers or hand position. Though it has reminders about correct hand position, the app certainly can’t replace a human teacher in that regard. The first few weeks I used the app, it often didn’t “hear” the notes correctly, so the feedback said I played them incorrectly. That was frustrating. Some tweaking of the microphone settings and piano volume mostly fixed the problem. A recent update changed the “listening engine” and the app hears the piano much better than before, at least on newer devices.
Is Simply Piano the only app of its kind? Certainly not. I tried Yousician and Flowkey and didn’t like either of them much.
Yousician ran slowly on my 2nd generation iPad, and quit randomly as I was using it. More than that, I didn’t like the color coding showing you which finger to use: it seems like an unnecessary technique that you have to unlearn when you start playing real sheet music.
Flowkey behaved better on my iPad, but I found the exercises tedious. For me, Simply Piano is not only friendlier, it gives better feedback and correction.
I also looked at a couple of apps that are supposed to help you learn by playing songs.
OnlinePianist uses colored bars to show you which notes to play and how long to hold them. I’m sure that’s great for many people, but I want to improve my sight-reading and it doesn’t help me at all. The app has a large library of popular songs: if your goal is to be shown how to play popular songs, OnlinePianist might be a good option.
Yokee Piano has a silly casino-like “earn coins and use them to buy songs” concept that put me off immediately. I deleted the app faster than I downloaded it.
In the time that I’ve been using Simply Piano, they’ve added several new lessons, songs, and features. There’s also a seasonal section, currently with “spooky” songs for Halloween.
Learning piano requires, more than anything, time on the bench. I’ve found Simply Piano to be a great motivator for me to practice and improve my skills. My goal is to be able to play publicly—at a gig–within a year. So far I’m on target.
Update: After about a year, Simply Piano wasn’t enough. Instead I switched to Pianote by Musora.
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“My advice to others is to use Simply Piano to get some basics down and develop the habit of playing and then slowly integrate Flowkey. Why do I say this? Because the missing theory and half hearted song transcription from Simply Piano isn’t enough to get anyone to the goals of being a professional player.”
Great advice, I’m using Simply Piano right now, it’s a very good App for new learners of Piano
I don’t think Simply Piano was ever geared to teaching people to be professional players. It’s great for getting started, having fun, and learning to sight read. I have gone as far as I can with Simply Piano. I’ve really enjoyed it, but now I’ve switched to the video course at Improv Piano Tips… https://www.improvpianotips.com.
Having used all the apps on the store I could find, I always tell people, the best thing about Simply Piano is that it keeps you playing. The app holds your attention and it certainly will help you improve, because you cannot improve if you’re not playing.
Now, the best I’ve found out there, is easily Flowkey and I mean that in a very big way… Flowkey has much more music theory, the app is simple to use, the sheet music is simply much more complete, and they use the transcriptions of artists you see on YouTube so you’re going to get very complete sheet music.
The problem with Flowkey though, it really puts all the drive on the individual to keep coming back and playing it. This is the area where it fails and that’s not a small issue.
My advice to others is to use Simply Piano to get some basics down and develop the habit of playing and then slowly integrate Flowkey. Why do I say this? Because the missing theory and half hearted song transcription from Simply Piano isn’t enough to get anyone to the goals of being a professional player.
With Yousician, I find it is similar to Simply Piano, but the theory and transcription are better. However, it’s still lacking a lot of what Flowkey brings to the table.
So, while Simply Piano does a few things well, it’s not really great for long term goals. Also, the way Simply Piano is designed, it creates an issue where you could actually damage your hands trying to correct mistakes out of frustration (I never had any hand pain from any of the other apps, it was a consistent issue from Simply Piano).
Thank you for your perspective, Pete. I still really enjoy Simply Piano. I have not experienced any issues with hand pain… and I have Dupuytren’s contracture in both hands. I agree that Simply Piano is light on theory, but my husband is a lifelong musician and music teacher, so I’ve received my theory instruction through him. That’s a great consideration, though.