best piano learning app for beginners
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hello to my fellow music lovers out there this is Christine again today I’m going to be taking you through a comparison of the floki app for learning piano and simply piano you may know that I have done a review in the past between simply piano and musician which you can find a link in the description below or up here at the top of the screen but today I’m going to talk about floki versus simply piano because I have just about finished all the floki exercises and I’ve been back working on simply piano recently they’re both fresh in my mind I think it’s the perfect time to go through it I’m gonna do the format a little bit differently than I did on my other review video I want to just go through my favorite parts of floki some criticisms or constructive feedback that I would have for the app as well as the same for simply piano then I’m going to talk a little bit about the pricing since it varies between the two apps and then wrap it up with some final thoughts so let’s dive right in and start with floki and so you know what you’re looking at on your screen is my iPhones floki apps because that’s what I’m able to record on I typically play with my iPad and full disclosure I do have an agreement with floki where I get Commission if anybody signs up through my affiliate link which you can find in the description below but I am going to keep my reviews honest and my true feelings of how I feel about all the different apps starting with my favorite parts of floki I believe the flow key is the top app of the ones that I’ve tried so far for music theory there’s a lot of information in here for the beginner to get started on understanding reading music notes and rhythm which is something I haven’t really seen covered much in the other apps and overall cover more Theory than the other apps too floki is also best for chords so there’s a couple different courses here on chords and they talk about both three note chords and for note chords which I’m almost there simply piano and they have not touched upon four note chords at all now if you’re an absolute beginner you may not even get to four note chords for quite a long time but I think it’s worth being introduced to them so that you understand when you see them on sheet music like you see over here my books over here you’re not overwhelmed by it but it is more of challenging thing and maybe not necessary for absolute beginners but I do like that floki is also I would say best for scales now the way that scales are covered in simply piano is they cover it within the different lessons so basically you can learn you learn one scale and then learn a lot of information and different songs in that scale floki has a section that covers all of the different scales at once there are not specific songs that you play with them so depending on your goals and what you want to do you may find it more fun and enjoyable to do it through simply piano but if you want to just practice your technique memorize your scales which is very important for reading sheet music then floki would be definitely the way to go there I’ve also found that when you’re in any particular lesson you’ll see they’re at the top of the screen that there is a video of the person playing the piano and that is great because you can take a look at what they’re doing and see if you’re doing it the same way they are the other apps just have animated keys that highlight which the one thing I have found about this because the video of the person playing takes up so much space is sometimes I end up looking at that instead of at the notes and of course that’s not going to help you be able to read sheet music but I do think it’s it’s very useful to be able to pay attention to if you’re careful not to handicap yourself by staring at it too much and my last favorite thing about floki is I found it to be the most challenging of all the apps this can be good and bad depending on where you are as a beginner there are times when a brand new song would pop up that was in line with the course I’m taking but I did not feel like I had advanced far enough or that I was experienced enough to be able to play it it challenged me I was able to get through most of them and you can skip over them and potentially come back later which is great but I did find that some parts of the app advanced a little too fast for me but if you’re really focused in concentrating it makes you feel really good when you get through that part of it also the most advanced lessons in floki involved improvisation I did not complete this last lesson on improvising with various pop styles because I don’t think that I’m ready for that yet but I find it really cool that they have something that advanced in the app now on to areas where I think floki could improve so there isn’t really a practice mode in floki like you’ll find in simply piano or use ition where you can manipulate how fast it’s playing whether you just want to look at the right hand or just the left hand floki has some of those options but you have to click through the exercises to get to them as opposed to being able to manipulate it right on the screen and choose exactly what you want to do what speed you want to play things like that so the practice mode is a bit more limited in what you can do also in order to practice new songs the format is the same throughout the entire app it is just this scrolling mode that waits for you while you play the notes which I can go ahead and show you here you can see it’s waiting for me to play the next note which does not help with knowing that you’re playing the right speed it does provide the little green check box which is nice but that’s really the only feedback you get as to whether you played it the timing is not really there so they have this format of stopping and waiting as you play I think they call it weight mode and the other one is that it just plays the song and you play along but again it doesn’t stop you if you’re messing everything up and start over or try to make you do it more slowly so as the beginner as the musician you have to determine whether you think you’re doing it well enough the app itself is not preventing you or saying hey you need a little bit of work less feedback basically and then a couple of small challenges I had one is that the volume on flow key at least on my iPad is not loud enough when my air conditioning comes on in my apartment I can hardly hear it and there’s no way to turn it up any louder and then the last thing is that there’s a lot of clicking and floki so you click play you watch them play through this a couple of times you can also skip through by scrolling but then I have to keep hitting the button to finally get to the point where I’m playing one of the great interface features of simply piano is that you can hit a key and it will make the pop-ups disappear and you don’t take your hands off the keyboard and that’s fantastic when you’re a beginner and you’ve arranged your hands exactly how you want them to start the song you don’t have to reach up and click on the screen to make the app continue for you that wraps up my thoughts on floki let’s dive right into simply piano I’ll mention this real quick just because you can see it on the screen here but simply piano takes forever to load my favorite part about simply piano is how entertaining it is it keeps me very engaged in the learning process and part of that is because of the variety of learning techniques they don’t just use the scrolling screen they also will flash up notes on the screen and you have to catch them for parts of a song that are really difficult to learn they break it down in a really small chunks and have you repeat it over and over again so that your hand gets some muscle memory for that it’s just a very engaging techniques they use for learning new songs so let me go ahead and show you the practice mode and then we’ll also talk about the feedback and exercise mode whenever you’re learning a song in simply piano you have the parts where they teach you the lessons and you’ll see if you click here on part one this is not a scrolling mode you can see it gives you a little tip and rather than having to click like you do in floki you can just start playing and it will go ahead [Music] so you see the way it does this not everything is scrolling this way if a part of a song is particularly difficult you can focus on it and I’ll have you repeat it over and over so that you get used to playing it develop some muscle memory when you get into the scrolling mode there’s different options here so there’s a practice mode you can use the ear to actually just listen to it first you can turn practice mode on so that you can reduce the tempo and as you play another thing I love about simply piano is the way they give you feedback if you play it right it turns blue if you miss it it turns red and if you miss too many notes it rewinds and has you play it again if you miss too many notes twice it puts you into practice mode automatically and slows down the tempo for you you can see in practice mode you can also make it wait for you which is just like the weight mode that they have in floki so there’s more options and settings that have the app help you along with whether or not you’re progressing well less of it is dependent on you making the decision for yourself that you’re ready to move on and I think that’s very helpful and motivating as I’m learning new songs another great feature in simply piano is that every course starts with a recap so at the beginning of it you’ll see a reminder and the reminder takes you through what you’ve been learning in previous lessons that way if you take a break for a little while you can come back also it just lets you repeat things and the more you repeat things the more likely you are to retain it simply piano also has this new play feature that is in beta it’s only available on iPad so I can’t show it to you here but it’s essentially a sheet music feature it will show you all the music on it there’s no scrolling mode it just shows you the sheet music and it will take you through it you can listen to it it will take you through practicing it shows you the finger numbers it’s still not perfect for translating to regular paper sheet music because the app has designed the music to look and feel just like the exercises that they have whereas the sheet music can vary greatly from what you’ve been learning so it’s not perfect but it does help you a bit with learning how to read some really simple sheet music and finally the last thing I love about simply piano I mentioned this before but it is fun and found myself enjoying coming to it each day but along with that it does seem to move very slowly I am all the way in intermediate four and we’ve just hit the G position which floki covers much earlier on but it does feel I feel like I’m progressing it just progresses quite slowly and so transferring that over to sheet music especially the types at least the books that I have has not been easy I think I’ve learned more about switching over to sheet music from floki than I have from simply piano however depending on the type of learner you are you may find that you enjoy the fact that simply piano moves so slowly so I think it just depends on the individual a quick look at the pricing for both apps as you can see over here floki is $19.99 per month whereas simply piano the smallest amount you can do is three months for $59.99 which is about $19.99 per month however with floki if you do a three month commitment it’s only $12.99 per month for the each of those three months twelve months for floki is $9.99 per month and you can there’s a $300 lifetime access option simply piano doesn’t have lifetime there 12 month is the same at $9.99 and there’s six they have a six month option at $14.99 a month so depending on the number of months that you want to commit to the pricing can be a little bit different between the two apps just a few final notes on this review I want to mention that I did not talk about the variety of songs that each of the apps has because songs are not a priority for me I want to be able to pick the songs I want to play out of sheet music so for me the priority is being able to read sheet music I should also mention that I think simply piano is a bit more of a mature app I don’t know which one has existed for longer but it seems to be have more thought put into the app development there are some bugs some buggy features with some of the song loads on floki also there’s more clearly more effort put into the interface with simply piano so while it is more entertaining to use I do think floki covers some excellent material that simply piano doesn’t have and there’s focus seem to be more on the theory the app development in conclusion if you’re debating between one of these two apps I’ll be honest and say I don’t think you can go wrong with either one but if you have a choice I think it’s easiest to start with simply piano because of the fun motivating enjoyment that you can get and the instant feedback that it provides you but once you get going I think switching to floki is a great idea because floki provides like I said more of that theory and you have to be a bit more self motivated with floki but if you’re really serious about learning piano then it’s definitely a great route to go so thank you all for joining me in this review of floki and simply piano I hope you have found the information useful if you have any questions please comment below and I will do my best to respond to you if you enjoyed this content please like the video subscribe to the channel love to have you join our small community that’s growing here of piano learners and I look forward to seeing you again soon bye bye …