The BEST APPS To Help You Learn The Piano!

more than 2 years ago I made a video on the best free piano app in today’s day and age especially with Co and it’s fair to say that it’s slightly outdated now a lot of the apps that I mentioned are no longer free or they have a certain amount of time that you get it free before you have to pay for it not to mention that in that video I had the personality of a 90-year-old man sitting watching daytime TV so I thought it was about time that I updated that video with the best piano apps to help you learn the piano and I’m going to give you how much the apps cost if they cost anything at all I’m going to tell you how they’re going to benefit your playing and I’m going to give you a few Alternatives in case you are using an iPhone or an Android or an iPad or another tablet so I’m going to break this into a few categories which are note recognition ear training timing Theory sheet music and stepbystep learning app so firstly note recognition now the app that I would most recommend for note recognition is an app called music chor this is an app that is available on both iPhone iPad Android and tablets and it is complet completely free however it does have ads and you can pay $1.99 to have it add free but honestly it does exactly the same job with or without the ads so essentially this is an app that is going to help you recognize individual notes on a page it’s going to help your music reading ability when we read sheet music we read from something called a Stave or a staff and this is just five lines on a page and on those five lines you have different dots that symbolize different notes on the piano and this app is essentially a game as to how fast you can recognize the note that is on the five lines it allows you to test yourself and get a score for doing as many as you can in 1 minute 5 minutes or 10 minutes and there is a list of options that enable you to change cleft or narrow the amount of notes that it will show or show Sharps and flats or various things like that so essentially you can set the game to test you within the amount of knowledge that you have and for piano purposes because we read in both base cleff and trouble cleff you can ask it to test you on both and it will randomly select either Bas cleft or trouble cleft and show you a series of notes in both I have actually used this app countless times on students of mine and it has really helped them recognize the notes really quickly I would recommend if you want to get the most out of the app and you are really wanting to learn the piano rather than just recognizing notes that you also play the note on the piano as you see it come up because learning the piano is kind of a two-step process you’ve got to see the note and recognize it and then translate that to your hands and play it on the piano and if you only get good at recognizing the note on the page you’ll find that you’ll be searching on the piano to find the note later on but if you are someone that struggles with site reading this is a really great way of just being instantaneously being able to recognize notes okay on to ear training apps now the first app is an app that I actually used in a video when I was testing whether I could develop Perfect Pitch this app is only available on Apple and it costs $10 a month for the full training program and essentially what this app does is it trains you in how to recognize pitches B flat so it will play you a notes and you have to work out what that note is just by listening to it you can pick between recognizing notes without any reference or recognizing intervals so the distance between two notes or even recognizing chords but if you want to be able to get really good with your ears and be able to recognize what people are playing just by listening to it and therefore work out songs by ear then this app is a great way of building that skill an Android alternative to this app is an app called Perfect Pitch trainer and this app although it doesn’t look as seamless and professional as tone does it does pretty much exactly the same job okay so the next category is timing and the only app that you will ever need for timing is a metronome if you don’t know what a metronome does essentially what it does is it clicks or beeps at regular intervals so if you are practicing the piano or playing something and want to play in time then you just play along to a metronome and you can train yourself into playing in time so on a metronome normally the default option is beats per minute for example if you have 60 beats per minute you will have have one beat every second and if you happen to be playing a piece of music where all the notes on the page Are One Beat long then you know that you’re going to be playing one note every click or if you’ve got every note being half a beat long then you’ve got to try and fit two notes in every click a metronome is the one and only thing that you will need in order to get very good at feeling rhythms and timings Now for Apple users there is an app called metrotimer which is the one that I use and I think that does an excellent job for Android users there is an app called Pro metronome and both of these apps have inapp purchases so you can upgrade to allow more features such as changing the sound of the click or adding in extra more obscure time signatures and things like that but honestly all you will ever need is just a basic metronome and it will do the job even if you have no access to any apps if you just type in the word metronome on Google Google themselves have a metronome built into the search engine okay on to the best theory apps now music theory is essentially one of those things that you do learn as a byproduct of learning the piano anyway and in actual fact you learn music theory by learning the piano probably more than most other instruments because it’s such a visual instrument you can see how your fingers are laid out and you can see different patterns much more easily than on other instruments and beyond that music theory depends on really what you want to do with the instrument so if you want to learn jazz you’re probably going to learn more about chords and sevenths and extended chords that kind of theory whereas if you want to be a classical musician then you’re going to learn about perfect cadences and playo cadences and things like that if you don’t know what those are then don’t worry but generally speaking there are certain things that you’re going to want to learn no matter what style of piano playing that you’re learning and one of the major things that you’re going to want to learn is scales and basic chords and for this there is an app called piano chords and scales I don’t know how they came up with that name I actually included this app in my previous video 2 years ago but since then the app has had quite a bit of an update and looks a lot better and is more functional than it was then it’s available on both Apple and Android and it is completely free but essentially is a good reference so that if you are looking for a certain scale that you need to know or you are looking for certain chords that you want to use then it will show you on a piano what those scales and chords look like and because there are limited scales and limited chords that you can actually learn you’ll find that the more time you spend with the app the better you get at just knowing what these things are another music theory app that is great for the essentials that you’ll need to know is the absm music theory trainer now absm are an exam board so their app is more catered to the exam system grades 1 through 8 and because if you want to learn grade eight on the piano or any other instrument you have to have grade 5 Theory this app caters to those people that are trying to learn up to grade five Theory but the app provides different sections for each grade so you can select grade one if you’re an absolute beginner and it will teach you the music theory for that grade and then ask you a series of questions to test whether you know what you’re talking about once you’ve got to grade five Theory you pretty much know everything that you need to know in order to progress further on any instrument but there is a lot more that you can learn beyond that the next category is sheet music apps now obviously when you are playing an instrument you’re going to want to find sheet music of pieces that you want to play in order to then be able to play them and in the past you would buy books with the pieces of music in that you wanted however obviously now we can just download music and there are apps that enable you to do this so firstly there is an app called imslp and this was actually a website long before it was an app and any classical musician will know of this website because it is a website that includes all the royalty-free music of all of the classical pieces that you could ever think of so if you are trying to learn a piece of Boven Mozart bark heyen chopan the list goes on and on it’s essentially the Wikipedia of classical music but the website includes various different versions of these pieces of music all the way from the original aex so the actual written copy of the music all the way up to the most modern editions and up until doing research for this video I had no idea that they actually had an app for this webbsite now as well so this is an absolute game changer for me and the app allows you to download any of these pieces of music onto your iPad or your Android or your iPhone and save it into a set list or a folder of pieces that you want to play and similar to the Kindle or Apple box you press on the right side of the screen to turn the page or press on the left side of the screen to turn back a page so if you are someone that is or is interested in learning classical music then this app is an absolute essential because you will pretty much have every classical piece that you will ever need on this one app and it’s called completely free all you have to do is wait 15 seconds after you’ve pressed on a piece for it to show up there is an inapp purchase option if you want to get rid of the 15-second weight and you want to download things like recordings of that piece but to be able to download any classical piano piece that you want for free it’s a no-brainer the next sheet music app that I would recommend is an app called Muse score now most people that are interested in music probably will have heard of muse score and they probably will have been on the website Muse score and if you are a musician and a composer then you probably download loaded Muse score in order to write music because it is arguably the best music writing software that is available today but all of the music that is written on their music writing software has to go somewhere and it usually goes to their website each person that composes a piece has the option to upload their piece of music to the website and therefore it becomes available for other people to view and download and read which means muscore has literally every piece that you could ever think of modern pop songs songs from 20 years ago classical pieces there is likely a version of that piece of music on M score for you to download now you do get access to some pieces of music on mcore for free however it’s £10 a month which is probably about $12 and that gives you access to the entire library of everything that is on M score and it is one of the most valuable things that I have ever invested in as a player and as a teacher because you can just download any piece of music that you need now a third sheet music app that I would recommend is an app called scribed this one is not specifically for sheep music music however it does have a sheet music section on the website and on the app and this is much better than M score for things like books or compilation books for example if you are looking for a book of musical theater hits or you are looking for a beginner piano book then the chances are that you’re going to be able to download that from scribed where you wouldn’t be able to from mcore because mcore is individual pieces of music and you have to know what you’re searching for whereas scribed is books so you could just find a compilation of pieces that you didn’t know you want to play I use this if I want to practice site reading or I want to just play a load of music as background music or even if I’m looking for a specific book like if I was looking for the dear Evan Hansen musical book with all of the songs from the musical in it then I would find that uncried so scribed costs £10 a month or about $12 and you do have the option to save the books and download them if you wanted to play offline and you just wanted a stack of books on an iPad okay so our last category is stepbystep learning apps so firstly before I name any of these apps because they will be the ones that most people have heard of before I want to caveat it by saying that there is no better option than getting a piano teacher and the reason for that is because it’s very personalized and they can cater to your specific needs or wants so if you want to learn a specific style of music or if you have a specific reason for learning the piano or if you have specific problems with your playing or let’s say you are particularly weak at reading music but you’re really great with your ears a piano teacher is going to be able to teach you those things much more specific to you than any app is going to be able to and this is largely why most musicians that have gone through that learning process have a problem with these types of apps yes we’re talking about these music learning apps that kind of show up in front of some of our videos that promise that you will learn the piano in 2 weeks wow it can become a prodigy having said this I have had students before who have used these apps prior to coming to me for lessons and they have been able to get started using them and I know that for someone who is starting an instrument and doesn’t necessarily feel confident enough to get themselves a teacher yet or doesn’t want to burden the cost of a teacher yet then these apps might be able to get you started but just be aware that I would not recommend them unless it’s just a shortterm temporary measure so honestly any of the apps for someone who is just trying to get started which are the dreaded simply piano musician flow key sco piano any of these will teach you something and get you started but I don’t wholly recommend them so at the moment simply piano is $150 a year musician sco and flowy are all $10 a month and out of all of those I would recommend Floy it’s more aesthetic it seems a bit easier to follow and it’s in partnership with Yamaha who are obviously great piano makers if you have used any of the apps that I’ve mentioned including these last ones then let me know in the comments what you thought of them and if you do have any questions or need any help then let me know in the comments or check out my website if you want to see my reaction to someone’s one year of piano progress then check out this video and I will see you there …

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