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Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#71

Post by jacquesm »

wazoox wrote: post #67

That's an interesting tool. As a former professional pianist, I'd repeat what I feel like the limitation of such a program: it does teach you note reading, which is nice, but really basic piano technique is a necessary preamble. You mentioned that your boy spent a whole day on this; with a bit of guidance, a full beginner after a few hours should be able to play this very simple melody with one hand, and to add a cou…

Yes, this is an urgent need and recognized. We are in the process of hiring a piano teacher to help with this as well as with making the program more absolute beginner friendly.

This project is a lot of work as it is today, it was made mostly to satisfy a need that I felt myself and my colleagues picked it up and ran with it so now it has some proper power behind it. We fully intend to 'stay the course' and make this a best-in-class offer but there is a long way to go before we can claim that we have achieved that.

As for the satisfaction, I think you may be off the mark there, I've had enough piano education to know what that was like and Luca is having a lot more fun with this program than I ever did being taught the piano by teachers at roughly the same age.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#72

Post by jacquesm »

murbard2 wrote: post #66
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

> This will not teach you to play piano. I agree, but tools like this or Synthesia can potentially help you practice the piano, which is what you should be spending most of your time on.

That is an excellent point and very well put.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#73

Post by jgwil2 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

> 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.

How many kids or adults who start with traditional piano lessons will actually make it past this level? I'm sure that it is the case that most people will eventually plateau using an app, but I doubt that a control group of people taking lessons would perform much better, and apps at least solve a problem of access.

The vast majority of children and virtually all adults starting piano will never achieve a high level of musicianship, but their lives may well still be enriched by the musical knowledge they gain.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#74

Post by necrotic_comp »

jacquesm wrote: post #63
necrotic_comp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent point- as mentioned below, MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. , all of which are quite important to understanding a piece ; Western music notation is both incredibly dense and concise, with no information wasted. Part of the art of practicing is the mental work of abstraction and internalization of the music - breaking it into smaller sections, understanding…

> MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. They actually do. What they don't take into account is whether a particular black key is a sharp or a flat, and this causes all kinds of headaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic

I stand corrected. Enharmonic stuff has to be a nightmare.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#75

Post by bromley »

I can imagine this being really useful for improving sight-reading.

However, for me what made piano a whole lot more fun was ditching the sheet music and opting to learn about chords, all the different ways to voice them, and the various scales that fit well on top of them. I started taking lessons with a pro jazz pianist (instead of a more typical classically-focused piano teacher), I gave up on sheet music altogether and started working off lead sheets instead (just chord symbols and a melody line). I am so pleased I made that decision, it's so much more satisfying playing a tune in your own way rather than just aiming for a note-for-note reproduction of what is written on a sheet.

I still have loads more to learn, but I'm fairly pleased with where I've got to so far. I've got a few videos on youtube so you can judge for yourself if interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NWuVoCn-Oc1KIiHEhe7Eg

However, although I think I can play reasonably well now, my sight-reading is awful, and it does hold me back because it makes it a lot harder for me to learn new techniques from sheet music (which I am actually interested in doing, as opposed to simply learning the sheet music note for note). I can do it just about, but it's painfully slow, so I am usually too lazy to bother.

Given the choice of either playing with full sheet-music or learning chords/voicings/scales and how to put them together, I'd pick the latter no question, and that is what I recommend to other adults who are learning piano, but I do think it's best to have both. So I can definitely see the value in this, even if it doesn't currently seem to teach the theory and improvisation that, in my opinion, is what really brings the joy into piano playing. I might give it a proper go myself some time soon, to see if it can help me improve my rubbish sight reading.

I can also imagine this being very useful for a beginner... Although I'm singing the praises of chord theory and improvisation I'm guessing most beginners might realistically do better starting with sheet music, for a while at least.

In summary: it might not teach everything, but it looks really useful nonetheless :)

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#76

Post by jacquesm »

y7 wrote: post #62
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

> There's nothing wrong with the idea of gameifying piano I wonder whether that's actually true. Or maybe it depends on what level you're trying to achieve. If you want to become a good piano player, the feedback mechanism that corrects your playing should actually come from listening yourself. A large part of the challenge in becoming a good player is figuring out what to listen for -- this is also why you need a te…

There was a lot of work done to the the timing as accurate as the chosen environment (the browser) allows and the grading takes into account both what you play as well as when you play it. There are more dimensions to add still: note release point and the volume at which the note is played.

I think the software actually helps you to spot subtle errors quite quickly, but you'd have to try it to see for yourself.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#77

Post by jacquesm »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

Thinking some more about your comment, would you be willing to criticize the application in detail to give us pointers about where we can improve it? We have some interesting ideas for the fingering problem which I won't share publicly here until we are ready to prove them.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#78

Post by jacquesm »

kzrdude wrote: post #59
speedgoose wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an adult beginning to learn piano using Flowkey. It's criticized by the experts but I feel like it does a relatively good job at teaching basic piano finger techniques. I have no wish to become a piano expert anyway, I play music as a hobby.

I'm learning as an adult. My piano teacher keeps stressing musicality, feeling the music, feeling the beat, everything like that is more important than technique.

The interesting thing for me is that this software taught me more about chords, beats, timing and so on than any of the teachers that I've had over the years because it is endlessly patient.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#79

Post by mcguire »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

Are you gatekeeping music?

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#80

Post by jacquesm »

bromley wrote: post #75

I can imagine this being really useful for improving sight-reading. However, for me what made piano a whole lot more fun was ditching the sheet music and opting to learn about chords, all the different ways to voice them, and the various scales that fit well on top of them. I started taking lessons with a pro jazz pianist (instead of a more typical classically-focused piano teacher), I gave up on sheet music altogeth…

Interesting track, there are a number of pianists (very good ones) that went that route. Keith Jarrett for instance, and Friedrich Gulda.
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