How to Learn Piano with Technology • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#31

Post by forgetfuldino » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

mhd wrote: post #14

truculation wrote: post #5

Finding the piece you badly want to learn next is important to learning the piano -- just as finding a Roald Dahl or a J.K.Rowling book is important to learning to read. Oh, and Bernhard's posts: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,12590.0.html

The problem is that you probably don't have an exact idea how difficult each piece is and might pick Chopin after Chopsticks.

I always recommend this list.

https://www.reddit.com/r/piano/comments/5k9jci/what_are_some...

Although, Minuet to Gymnopedie is a big 'jump'

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#32

Post by sylvain-geinoz » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

Of course you can learn a lot on the internet, but it can take more time than you think. I'm not saying this apps are bad. But I just think sometime learning with a true person in front of you is more efficient. For exemple the fear of doing something wrong can add some pressure so you will have more motivation and learn faster.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#33

Post by veli_joza » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #23

bumelant wrote: post #20

Piano is not about mechanics. Everyone can do that. Piano is not about playing. It’s about hearing! And no app can replace professional human being with ability to hear these tiny nuances. Sorry to say that but if you want to play music, not piano, get a teacher.

Even if no app can replace a critiquing and guiding human teacher entirely, it could try. Do many apps try that? Maybe it's a huge opportunity.

I would think so too. Everybody recommends finding a teacher (and a good one at that), but that's not possible for many people. Most people don't have access to good teacher, money to pay one, or enough time for scheduled lessons. Should they give up playing altogether? Even video courses are not good enough because they don't critique your technique or offer suggestions on how to improve playing at your level.

All the apps I've seen are terribly non-musical. They take small part of music (ear training, sight reading, repetition of phrases) and make you train in isolation. I would like to see an app that teaches music in context of music. Show me a concept in isolation (for example minor triad, or ii-V-I progression, or triplets), then play me some actual music examples, then allow me to exercise what I learned with some accompaniment and correct my mistakes. Such app AFAIK doesn't exist.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#34

Post by conorh » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

I'm 40 years old, starting working with the Simply Piano app a few months ago and spend about 30 minutes to an hour each day practicing. I have zero prior musical experience. I think a piano teacher would probably be an excellent investment, my daughter started piano around the same time with a teacher and she is progressing slower, but I can see that she already has a much more solid base than I do and will learn to play much better than I likely ever will. However I'm not in this to learn in any serious way, just to noodle around and play songs that I like and I find that working with an app that gives instant feedback is a relaxed and low pressure way to do that.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#35

Post by jinfiesto » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

I studied piano performance in college. I do not recommend learning without a good teacher if you plan on taking it seriously. There's a lot that can go wrong. Also, in terms of information sharing, it's very difficult to find accurate/good information about playing the piano correctly without a good teacher (these are in pretty short supply) as a lot of that information just gets passed from student to teacher and isn't typically shared all that openly.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#36

Post by gtani » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

Pretty sensible self teaching approach. I thought this would be mostly about tools like synthesia, glowing LEDs built into keyboards and Ableton piano rolls.

My sense is that not many people get far with self teaching piano but some are happy to be able to e.g. comp chords out of Oscar Peterson's etudes book slowly or play a few pieces out of those Fabor Adult Piano books, which are pretty good.

I think most people that try to self teach a difficult instrument, trumpet or violin, give up. My sense of difficult is that anything I didn't learn as a kid is more or less difficult (I had 15 years lessons on 3 instruments)

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#37

Post by jrimbault » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

gjulianm wrote: post #28

jrimbault wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started studying piano as child (music theory also), and still do 15-20 years later. I cannot, at all , play from something like synthesia. I need partitions. I wonder why.

Me neither. I don't think synthesia is even remotely comparable in usefulness to a partition. It's really hard to read ahead (without the keyboard reference it seems really hard to identify which note is which) and estimating note duration from the note length is not as easy as just looking at the note. I always thought it was more of a gimmick (when talking about reading piano specifically, I assume it's more useful…

Even for creating music, there must be easier ways to automatically write the partition of what you're playing ?

I never had a digital keyboard, so I never looked into capture methods.

I have used MuseScore, which has gotten much better.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#38

Post by _raoulcousins » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

organsnyder wrote: post #26

These sorts of tools are definitely useful, especially for those that otherwise wouldn't have access to music instruction. But there would be huge pieces missing: teaching musicianship (perfect accuracy is a bad thing), finding repertoire to engage the student, arranging performance opportunities... Basically, I think these tools replace bad piano teachers. Of course, there are a lot of bad piano teachers out there (…

Serious question: what does it mean that perfect accuracy is a bad thing? I'm not a pianist and I'm not a professional, but I'm an amateur oboist (20 years in student/amateur orchestras). I think of technical accuracy as necessary but not sufficient for playing music. When I really have a piece down technically I can focus 100% on musicality, but I want the technical parts down solid.

Of course as I'm practicing, I am deliberate at working on both the technique and playing expressively. If I'm not deliberate about it, it's too easy to just focus on nailing the technique - it's a lot easier than the musicality.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#39

Post by RootReducer » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #17

I've been learning piano for the past few years, and I will say I fell in love with the iOS app Simply Piano ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simply-piano-by-joytunes/id1... ). I would highly recommend it for learning.

I've been learning with Simply Piano for about 6 months now and I'm amazed at my progress in that time. I'd highly recommend it.

Re: How to Learn Piano with Technology

#40

Post by wickawic » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

_raoulcousins wrote: post #38

organsnyder wrote: post #26

These sorts of tools are definitely useful, especially for those that otherwise wouldn't have access to music instruction. But there would be huge pieces missing: teaching musicianship (perfect accuracy is a bad thing), finding repertoire to engage the student, arranging performance opportunities... Basically, I think these tools replace bad piano teachers. Of course, there are a lot of bad piano teachers out there (…

Serious question: what does it mean that perfect accuracy is a bad thing? I'm not a pianist and I'm not a professional, but I'm an amateur oboist (20 years in student/amateur orchestras). I think of technical accuracy as necessary but not sufficient for playing music. When I really have a piece down technically I can focus 100% on musicality, but I want the technical parts down solid. Of course as I'm practicing, I a…

For a simple example, any music that “grooves” (makes you want to tap your feet) tends to not be perfectly sub-divided into 4 beats. Different players in the same band may be intentionally (and/or subconsciously) hitting their notes on different parts of the beat to increase this effect. In this type of scenario there really isn’t any substitution for practice and “feel”, a metronome would never get you there.

In terms of piano, GP may have been referring to rubato, or holding notes for longer/shorter than notated for artistic effect.