Fingering hints are work in progress, it is one of the most important things we will add. So completely agreed that it is important. That said, I've taught myself some pretty complicated pieces with it and fingering tends to be something that works out over time because there really is only one comfortable way of playing a piece. 90% or so will be obvious, and the 10% that remains will require some hard thinking on how to move your hands and place your fingers so that it feels natural. Bach is pretty brutal: try a fingering that isn't optimal and you simply won't be able to play it (or even injure yourself).
> There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano, but it's a really hard problem to solve well.
Agreed. So, my previous 'side project' I babysat for about two decades, I'm in this for the long haul and fully intend for it to be 'best of breed' and standard setting. Which is one of the reasons why we are recruiting a piano teacher right now.
> The usual result with piano teaching apps of all kinds - as someone else commented below - is kids get up to Grade 1 (maybe 2) and then hit a brick wall.
But that's already better than nothing at all, and if we can find a way around that brick wall then I see no reason why it could not go much further than that.
I don't think a piece of software can be a substitute for a teacher, but I do know that if I'm practicing I'd rather do that by myself than to have a teacher look over my shoulder for hours on end.
> The reality is that playing any instrument with non-trivial competence is really fucking hard. It takes everyone a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get good at it - even those with talent.
That we fully agree on. But that doesn't mean people can't get from zero to fifty before deciding that they need better tools and better teachers. There is room for a multitude of tracks some of which will lead to success. The main objectives for me are: to help beginners achieve a level of immediate success that it increases their interest, to ensure that they can get to some level of proficiency before shelling out a lot of money, to overcome the usual frustration that causes people to abandon their chosen instrument, to ensure that they don't learn bad habits.
> So there's a trade off between trying to offer easy but limited success with some entertainment value, and going the whole way and doing it properly - which all but the most musical kids get very bored by, because it's such hard work.
This is also very true. But it may be possible to chart a path that includes both of those in one offering, I'm not sure that we are on that path right now but it definitely is the intention.
Think of this as the beginnings of an engine, which can be used in many different ways. I now first want to get that engine perfected and then to create the rest of the application around it.
So far, especially the 'auto' mode which creates small lessons based on your performance so far has been a game changer for me and for the rest of the people that have been playing around with it, it is conceptually simple, a bit tricky to implement but now that it is there I wonder how I did without it before. The ROI of practice time invested in a piece versus my ability to play it has literally jumped up because of that.