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Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

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Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#91

Post by peteforde »

About a week ago, I started practicing daily with an app called Melodics. This is after putting off starting for, well, my whole life.

Hot damn, I can play [a bit of?] piano now. I am genuinely shocked and couldn't be more excited.

Here's the thing: the app kind of flips the script on what I have always intuitively felt holds most musical teaching approaches back, which is the insistance that you want to play classical sheet music.

I very much do not want that! I want to be able to learn to be comfortable jumping to notes so that I can play contemporary, recognizable songs and eventually start to craft my own originals. I want to think in terms of bass lines, melodies and leads.

I think classical music is beautiful to hear in the abstract, but the idea that it's how or why you want to be able to play keyboard is actually super fatal, especially if you want to engage a young person.

What I'm finding as I work through exercises and practice on songs I either love or recognize is that my awful sense of timing is improving noticably every day because I know how Hey Ya! is supposed to feel, and so long as it feels wrong, my brain and my fingers have a target to work towards.

And let me just say that the gamification works. Sure, getting 90% or more will earn you three stars, but if you're like me, you want to see a wall of Perfect.

Anyhow, I don't dispute that when it comes to learning classical music from sheet, Hanon Pro probably raises the bar. But my immediate and visceral reaction to the screenshot was a hard nope.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#92

Post by [deleted] »

FLT8 wrote: post #27

I tried it, I guess I'm your target market, I'm relatively new to keyboard, trying to learn, and do happen to have a Bluetooth MIDI adapter. A few notes and observations from a quick trial run below: - the app crashed out a few times when connecting to my MIDI controller (a Yamaha MD-BT01 dongle that plugs into the old school MIDI plugs on the keyboard). Not sure what's going on there, but it happened a few times. -…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#93

Post by zetsurin »

dfee wrote: post #73

I’m a father of two children, a nine and two year old, and none of us know how to play piano. I did play a woodwind for five years in and out of school, and did extracurricular music for many years - even from a young age. Now, I’d like my son to learn piano as his first instrument. I imagine the theory and complexity of chords thrust on the pianist must be a good foundation for music in general - certainly I’m fine…

Anecdotal, but maybe it'll help

I had a goal of introducing my kids to piano, and also wanted to pick it back up myself (I'd been forced to as a kid and hated it, never progressed beyond beginner).

I got myself a casio privia (it's a costco special 88 weighted keys, was the reddit recommendation for beginners at the time). Then paid for lessons with a teacher for my family which by far outweighed the cost of the keyboard.

About 10 years later: rest of family have given up piano, they didn't progress far, and i didn't do any forcing; but it was nice to hear them play when they did. I've kept it up although progress is very slow.

I think my feelings are: - I could have spent more on the piano (my dad got a significantly more expensive piano, and it is more pleasurable to play): quieter keys, better action on the keys. - I feel pretty good about how far my the rest of my family progressed, and am happy that i didn't push - I feel like a teacher somewhat forces you to keep practising even when you don't want, and maintains some progress, I don't think I'd get this from an app.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#94

Post by zetsurin »

albertru90 wrote: post #81
FLT8 wrote: post #27

I tried it, I guess I'm your target market, I'm relatively new to keyboard, trying to learn, and do happen to have a Bluetooth MIDI adapter. A few notes and observations from a quick trial run below: - the app crashed out a few times when connecting to my MIDI controller (a Yamaha MD-BT01 dongle that plugs into the old school MIDI plugs on the keyboard). Not sure what's going on there, but it happened a few times. -…

Thank you for the feedback. The crashes should be fixed in the 1.0.2 update rolling out today. If you have any additional feedback as you use the app more, please email us.

>I would also like the ability to start from a bar of my choice and maybe even evaluate a one or two bar section at a time rather than having to play the whole piece

^ IMO this should be among your top priority.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#95

Post by brcmthrowaway »

tzs wrote: post #89
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #82

I remember there was a strange PDF of learning piano floating around back in the day by a simple father. Was written in MS word .. did anyone ever try it?

Are you thinking of "Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chang [1]? [1] http://www.pianopractice.org/

Yes is it still in vogue

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#96

Post by mrbombastic »

nh2 wrote: post #64
mrbombastic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from an adult because it seems like you have experience with some of these tools, I’ve been using SimplyPiano for a few months, which listens to notes you play and gives you feedback, and while it is satisfying to hear the music I can’t shake that I am not really learning just copying. For instance I can play some of the advanced songs in the app but I open a piece of sheet music and I am lost. Is there simi…

Yes, the same concern exists for Synthesia. It teaches a significant amount of muscle memory. But that is not such a bad thing: * Muscle memory is part of the game, for any instrument (at least for the ones I know). * Some of the muscle memory is transferable. For example, when you learn some chords on Synthesia, you can transfer many of them to other parts of the keyboard, also when you're not using the tool. * For…

Thanks so much! This is very helpful!

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#97

Post by mtalantikite »

jraph wrote: post #50
kashunstva wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this. Hanon coul…

My piano teacher uses the Hanon for warmup, and it does seem to help train the fingers. We have never looked at the instructions, I didn't know it recommended this. It seems painful. Instead, she gives rhythms to follow, there's also one exercise consisting in accentuating times. I guess it can (should) be used like this: keep the scores, disregard the instructions, add your own exercises on top of the scores. I do f…

Practice your scales in parallel and contrary motion through the circle of fifths. Then pick a few four part chords and play through their 10 forms and inversions.

If you’re looking for exercises, check out Dohnanyi’s book: https://arhtisticlicense.com/2017/01/21/how-to-practice-pian...

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#98

Post by flemhans »

lioeters wrote: post #59
solarengineer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.

> one-finger pianist That reminds me there are people who type on the (computer) keyboard with two fingers, searching for each key and pecking at it. I was fortunate to have "blind typing" classes as a child, including a fun game where you type to shoot at words falling on a city. That skill has been really valuable over the years. I wonder if there are similar concepts for learning to play on the piano keyboard, lik…

There are some games like that, e.g. Synthesia.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#99

Post by flemhans »

jocoda wrote: post #43

Disappointed. The App Store tells me that the app will run on my IPad, an older model, just out of support and waits for me to click install before it tells me it wants iOS 17. Pity, this would be a great use for an older model. Is there a reason to hard wire this to iOS 17? Version is configurable in xCode and so I'm wondering what specifics bind it to 17.

If it's using SwiftUI, a lot of features aren't available if you target older iOS versions.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#100

Post by oriolid »

lioeters wrote: post #59
solarengineer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.

> one-finger pianist That reminds me there are people who type on the (computer) keyboard with two fingers, searching for each key and pecking at it. I was fortunate to have "blind typing" classes as a child, including a fun game where you type to shoot at words falling on a city. That skill has been really valuable over the years. I wonder if there are similar concepts for learning to play on the piano keyboard, lik…

Yes, there are gamified learning apps like this. Some of the more well-known ones are Simply Piano, Yousician, Skoove and Synthesia and various clones but just searching "piano" on iOS app store gave me longer list than I cared to scroll through.

The nice thing is that you have to learn to play without looking at your hands because your eyes are fixed at the screen. The less nice part is that especially with Synthesia style it is difficult to play without the app.

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