Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

jacquesmattheij.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–179 of 179 posts

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

#171

Post by bromley »

jacquesm wrote: post #161
bromley wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds great to me - sight reading is difficult, and frustratingly hard work too, so assistance in mastering that skill is welcome. I am without MIDI keyboard at present as I play an acoustic upright, but I will look out for an opportunity to give it a proper go. And I might as well put in a feature idea (which I suspect would be rather tricky to implement but here goes anyway!): it would be awesome if it could ta…

Yes, that is the most frequently requested feature right now and on HN'er in this thread has courteously allowed me to use their software to try to implement this. Stay 'tuned' :)

Excellent! Good luck with it :)

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

#172

Post by pianoboard »

jacquesm wrote: post #166
pianoboard wrote: post #159

On this note,seeing as cheap qwerty keyboards easily come in $5 and good in $20, is there a "piano" keyboard that only has keys laid out in piano fashion, rest left to drivers a small software that plays appropriate tones .... I'd prefer something small- only two octaves and a plus/minus button to shift octaves.

I will look at using the regular PC keyboard as a stand-in midi keyboard of ~ 2 octaves. This is not going to give a great experience (especially because many keyboards have limited key-rollover) but it should give a less-hardware-required onboarding experience, which is always a good thing.

Thanks for responding. I've tried using paino software before but the "key press" experience is suboptimal.

While you're right about onboarding effort, my guess/hope is that the required driver software shouldn't be hard for me or manufacturer to write.

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

#173

Post by jacquesm »

pianoboard wrote: post #172
jacquesm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will look at using the regular PC keyboard as a stand-in midi keyboard of ~ 2 octaves. This is not going to give a great experience (especially because many keyboards have limited key-rollover) but it should give a less-hardware-required onboarding experience, which is always a good thing.

Thanks for responding. I've tried using paino software before but the "key press" experience is suboptimal. While you're right about onboarding effort, my guess/hope is that the required driver software shouldn't be hard for me or manufacturer to write.

The code is up on gitlab, you can hack on it for private purposes to your hearts content.

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

#174

Post by jacquesm »

khazhoux wrote: post #149
jacquesm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess here and say that you are practicing a very limited repertoire, rather than to learn to play the instrument, in which case you are memorizing movements instead of music. Is that correct?

A fine guess but actually I cycle through what I think is a pretty big range. E.g., several Denes Agay classical+romantic compilations, the standard basic Bach + Beethoven, simple Chopin, John Field, Philip Glass (repetitive patterns help), etc. Another frustrating thing is it's not just long-term finger memory that kills me, my real-time memory bus is slow when learning a piece -- the transfer of "what notes comes n…

More thinking about this: have you thought of breaking up the pieces you practice in to much shorter sections of maybe 20-30 bars and practice those as individual pieces of music and the stitch them together once you have mastered all of them? That might help you with the memorization, memorization of a very lengthy piece is hard if you do it with playthroughs but if the playthrough is a smaller part then it might work.

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

#175

Post by musicale »

> Note that it would have been trivial for us to force our users into a relationship with us by having to make an account and we made a very conscious choice not to do this.

Bravo! Well done and well said - I really wish more projects and systems were developed with this mindset, viewing users as people to be empowered rather than as resources to be captured and exploited.

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

#176

Post by khazhoux »

jacquesm wrote: post #174
khazhoux wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fine guess but actually I cycle through what I think is a pretty big range. E.g., several Denes Agay classical+romantic compilations, the standard basic Bach + Beethoven, simple Chopin, John Field, Philip Glass (repetitive patterns help), etc. Another frustrating thing is it's not just long-term finger memory that kills me, my real-time memory bus is slow when learning a piece -- the transfer of "what notes comes n…

More thinking about this: have you thought of breaking up the pieces you practice in to much shorter sections of maybe 20-30 bars and practice those as individual pieces of music and the stitch them together once you have mastered all of them? That might help you with the memorization, memorization of a very lengthy piece is hard if you do it with playthroughs but if the playthrough is a smaller part then it might wo…

That's actually how I usually practice, by section...

I think I'm finally gonna try something I've been thinking for years: Photocopy a score, then take scissors to it and come up with a condensed version with only the parts that I blank on. I might discover that in a four-page piece, I only need a half-dozen nudges.

Thanks for the thoughts, Jacques!!

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

#177

Post by quacked »

jacquesm wrote: post #124
quacked wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely isn't helping, haha. I also play piano, guitar, and compose, and I used to struggle with memorizing, but I've been reading a lot of piano practicing theory and have drastically upgraded my finger memory, mostly by using these resources: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=12590.0 (look for Bernhard's post) http://www.pianopractice.org/ Loosely, stop using sheet music except when you're initi…

Bernhard is awesome . I've learned more about piano playing and teaching from his posts than from my 'live teacher'.

I completely agree; Bernhard's posts made me realize that even professionals do not necessarily know the most efficient methods for teaching and learning, and that it may be necessary for students, even as amateurs, to challenge and seek advice beyond what their teachers are capable of, despite the existing gap in skills.

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

#178

Post by quacked »

khazhoux wrote: post #150
quacked wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely isn't helping, haha. I also play piano, guitar, and compose, and I used to struggle with memorizing, but I've been reading a lot of piano practicing theory and have drastically upgraded my finger memory, mostly by using these resources: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=12590.0 (look for Bernhard's post) http://www.pianopractice.org/ Loosely, stop using sheet music except when you're initi…

Thanks for the links! It'd be amazing if it's not a memory problem (at least, not any more so than for most other people who learn piano) but just have to learn a new way of connecting them neurons.

I wouldn't be surprised if you find yourself with a much greater facility for memorization. The only caveat is that it takes longer to get to the point where you can "play through" a piece, which feels less efficient than learning by sheet music, but I find that my ability to interpret and make phrasing choices with memorized music is much greater than it is with music I'm reading.

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

#179

Post by DePro99 »

rednum wrote: post #45

This seems a bit similar to Melodics[1], except open source and it actually uses the standard notation. I know how to read music and started taking classical lessons as an adult. Some time last year a friend recommended me to check out Melodics. It has 3 instruments: keys, pads (finger drumming), drums. I've played pads for few mont;hs, that was good, I've felt it improved my timing and rhythm skills quite a bit. The…

This is just what I needed. I just bought an electric keyboard last week and have practiced with Melodics every day since (the free version, so 5 minutes every day :P), but I have some issues with things like how it just keeps going if you mess up or are too slow and the fact that it doesn't use sheet music or let you use your own music (granted, I haven't looked into the subscription version's features yet).

I just opened this and spent 20 minutes trying to play 4 bars I wrote a year ago in MuseScore. I am definitely a noob at playing, hahaha. I always figured being able to play in real-time isn't of much value, but I'd like to be able to improvise and use a piano to enter notes when composing at least, and then I saw some of Lionel Yu's videos and bought a keyboard... (https://www.youtube.com/c/LionelYuPiano/videos)

I definitely appreciate the auto-replay, simultaneous note count limit, waiting until you hit a key (both at the start and mid-song if you're slow), and scoring.

Post reply on HN