Piano Software

Piano software can help support your learning whether you have a teacher or not. There are various different pieces of piano and keyboard software to help learn the position of the notes on the keyboard and support learning to read music.

If you have used any of the software on this page, or any other piece of music software for learning, please scroll down the page or click here to leave a review of the software you have used to let others have the benefit of your insight. Thank you

Piano Wizard Academy

For young students without a teacher (and older beginners alike) the Piano Wizard Academy software is one of my top piano software recommendations. I also recommend this system to teachers with very young students who are having difficulties when learning the piano.

The Piano Wizard Academy system isn't cheap at $599 (although this includes a keyboard, DVDs, Books and the software) but if you compare it to the price of piano lessons each week, it actually works out to be less expensive in the long run, with a half hour lesson each week being approximately $20 - $30…and this doesn't include a keyboard, books or DVDs you can watch over and over again! The Piano Wizard method follows an initial 4 step plan that differs from the traditional teaching of music reading. There is a brief description of how the piano software progresses through each step below. You can also Click here for more information on Piano Wizard Academy including screen shots and a video explaining the system in more depth.

1. Step 1 asks students to match the colored keyboard notes on the screen to a physical color coded keyboard. This is presented as a game and is easy and fun for students (and adults it seems) to complete.
2. Step 2 rotates the keyboard to appear vertically on the left hand side of the screen. This is used to show how music notation is basically just a grid system, where the pitch is higher or lower depending on the vertical position of notes. It also shows how note spacing is important to duration value. This helps students with sight reading and also makes their music writing more easily readable in the future when composing or writing any music down.
3. Step 3 replaces the keyboard picture/grid system withcolored notes on the standard music stave. This enables students to match the notes to the keyboard notes easily, learning their positions as they work through the games. I also find this helps students have a better grasp of intervals between notes that is missing in a traditional teaching method.
4. Step 4 transforms the colored notes into black and white notes. Since the students are already aware of how music on the staff works, this becomes a simple step in the music reading process, rather than the quantum leap it takes young children to make when learning to play piano from scratch.
5. Step 5 makes a move to reading music in standard notation, without having first completed steps 1 - 4 with colored notes. This is the move to reading sheet music, which is just shown as a black and white map of the game played previously.

The benefits of Piano Wizard Academy are that the learning process is made into a fun game… and we all know that learning is quicker and better quality when it is fun. Additionally students want to work through the lessons and practice because the sense of winning the game gives them a great sense of achievement and progress. Overall I recommend this program especially for younger students and those adults who feel they can work through the course without feeling patronized!

Piano Is Fun

This is a (much) cheaper, although less involved, alternative piece of piano software. This is more useful to piano students with a teacher although it would be useful to those learning on their own or using other online piano lessons. This piano software consists of various games to help teach the notes on the music staff and their positions on the keyboard in both treble and bass clefs. The notes are taught gradually, including the ability to select which notes you want to practice. You can Click here for more information on Music Is Fun including screen shots and videos explaining the course in more depth.

I recommend the Music Is Fun course to students to help them learn and review the notes on the staff and help them achieve a clear understanding of how written music works and become fluent music readers…while playing a fun game! What more could you ask?

Expert Practice Secrets

Frustrated with your practice? Read Practice Makes Perfect and hack the 10,000 hour rule. Cut your practice time by up to 25%! Make faster progress, learn pieces and scales faster, memorize more easily, and much more. "If you play an instrument you need this book!"

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