[HN Gopher] Show HN: Hanon Pro - piano technique and exercises f...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Hanon Pro - piano technique and exercises for the digital
age
Author : albertru90
Score : 209 points
Date : 2024-08-03 05:21 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (furnacecreek.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (furnacecreek.org)
| xlii wrote:
| This looks fascinating.
|
| Im missing one thing though. Highlight of an app is that it can
| analyze play from MIDI but being an interested person it
| immediately pushes me toward "pick a device" which is immediate
| ehhhh area for myself.
|
| I know there are many and there's personal preferences etc. but I
| think that (since it's an educational system) there should be
| kickstart process accessible, i.e. matrix of recommended devices
| and peripherals (size/price).
| rreyes1979 wrote:
| Came to ask exactly the same thing. Want to buy one for my kids
| to practice but I don't have an idea which would be the best
| given our budget and preferences so a matrix of compatible
| devices would be great.
| _def wrote:
| I think it's actually difficult to find a keyboard that does
| not do USB midi nowadays. What's more important is what keys
| and keybed you want, it's about being able to comfortably
| play on the thing, that has not much to do with this app (as
| at least USB midi is quite universal now, as stated)
| larrysalibra wrote:
| Just did research into this question...I'm someone that
| played piano as a child and wanted to get back into it. I
| wanted to get something that would integrate with apps, good
| action and sound without making a massive investment in case
| I don't stick with it. I also wanted something that was small
| and easy to move.
|
| My digital piano just arrived a few hours ago.
|
| I decided on the Roland FP-30X after trying several models in
| store.
|
| Pro-tip: many of the big name digital pianos are half the
| price in the mainland China market than in the rest of the
| world. Often for an upgraded model as well.
|
| FP-30X was 3850 CNY (~US$550) including the Roland KPD-70
| three pedal unit and KSC-70 stand. Delivery (to Hong Kong)
| was ~400 CNY.
|
| Another good option is the FP-18 which is a mainland market-
| only China model that's an upgrade overthe FP-10 in that it
| has more sounds and also supports three pedals. It's about
| ~1200 CNY cheaper than the FP-30X. Downside is slightly
| inferior sound and speakers compared to FP-30x
|
| I also tried out the Yamaha portables...P-525 was excellent
| but about 3x the cost of the FP-30x. I didn't really like
| feel of the action of the cheaper Yamaha (P-225?).
|
| So far FP-30X has been great...the bluetooth MIDI interface
| and bluetooth interfaces work seamlessly with my iPad. I
| haven't tried out Hanon Pro yet but it's been really
| thrilling to try out the various piano learning apps. If I
| had these back in the 90s, I'd probably be a much better
| piano player now! Better late than never!
| navbaker wrote:
| I would highly recommend Pianote if you're looking for an
| online lessons resource. They have tons of YouTube videos
| you can check out to see if their style works for you, then
| you can subscribe to the actual site when you're ready for
| a more structured learning path. It did wonders for me
| getting back into piano after a few decades off!
| larrysalibra wrote:
| Thanks! I've added it to my list to give it a try!
| nh2 wrote:
| If you want kids to be excited about playing the piano, get a
| keyboard with light keys like the Yamaha EZ-300.
|
| Combined with a learning software that can control the light
| (Synthesia, or the one from Yamaha itself, maybe also the one
| in the original post), it creates a huge amount of fun and
| motivation. Also works very well for adults.
|
| Keyboards like this do not give you proper hammer-action
| piano keys, but it makes you discover you /want/ to be a
| pianist, cheaper and with fun.
|
| (There are also a few hammer-action lit digital pianos but
| they aren't as fun, and already quite expensive.)
|
| Also consider Synthesia's short list:
| https://synthesiagame.com/keyboards/info
|
| (I'd get the EZ-300 over the PSR-EW310 listed there for that
| price class, I believe it didn't exist when that list was
| written.)
|
| Pop in songs they like (e.g. Disney or Pokemon) from a
| MuseScore subscription for engagement optimisation ;-)
| mrbombastic wrote:
| 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 similar concern for synthesia?
| nh2 wrote:
| 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 many people, motivation must come first. Learning a
| piece by muscle memory shows you that you can do it.
| Wanting to read sheet music naturally follows, from the
| fact that muscle memory is limited, and to play more
| stuff.
|
| * Synthesia also teaches rhythm, which some people
| already have but others don't. You can learn rhythm
| because Synthesia shows how long each note is, and you
| can see it coming ahead of time.
|
| * You should learn to read music notation in all cases.
| Learning the concept only takes 30 seconds: Remember
| where one note is and do the rest by line counting. The
| speed of reading will come automatically over time. Then
| for some songs, enable Synthesia's sheet note display and
| cover the falling notes from sight. It will show you
| whether you're reading it correctly. It'll be painfully
| slow at the beginning but improve over a couple days. It
| allows you to transfer over to just reading the sheets.
| Eventually that will become the more convenient way, as
| the need to download (e.g. from MuseScore and import into
| Synthesia) disappears; not that it's great effort, but
| eventually you can just browse easy pieces of sheet music
| and start playing the ones you like as you see them.
|
| Tools like Synthesia help improve on some of the skill
| axes; use other methods for the remaining ones.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I am an adult who takes beginner lessons from a teacher
| and he says with new students he often has to undo the
| "learning" from (sometimes years of) those apps - and it
| can often be devastating to the ego, especially for kids.
| fma wrote:
| Im trying to get my daughter (age 8) into piano and I see
| the same thing echo on Reddit while doing my research.
|
| It's no different than picking up a ball and playing
| basketball on your own or tennis...or a simple coding
| book and making a CRUD app without all the best practices
| or Code Complete and your fancy frameworks.
|
| I got the exact piano op mentioned on prime day for
| $150?. I have Simply Piano. My daughter will ask to play
| the "piano game".
|
| Last summer I signed up my daughter for Ukulele class
| with a teacher. She barely touched outside what was
| required assignments.
|
| Yes in the perfect world I have a real piano, with a real
| teacher who is great with kids who makes it so fun my
| daughter wants to practice everyday.
|
| But I only have one shot to get her hooked and build
| momentum. IMHO passion comes first, then technique.
| Passion comes from having fun.
| thibaut_barrere wrote:
| It is a good point, often raised by people.
|
| I researched that for my sister for instance, and found that
| this series https://www.thomann.co.uk/kawai_es_120_b.htm is a
| very good compromise (for < 600EUR).
|
| I consider it is best, though, to try it out a bit at a store
| to make your own opinion first!
|
| Too low a price -> the pleasure experienced is lower, not
| flattering and discouraging to the player. But you do not need
| 1kEUR here either now.
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| Studio Logic has a good range of MIDI controllers [1] [2], some
| of which include built-in audio synthesis, and others just the
| controller. I think they are very competitive in terms of
| price. I have a SL88 and the thing is definitely built to last
| and feels like a real piano keyboard.
|
| --
|
| 1: https://studiologic-music.com/products/
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatar
| benob wrote:
| Why is it iOS17+ only?
| albertru90 wrote:
| The app uses recent SwiftUI and SwiftData APIs that are not
| available on older OSes.
| oellegaard wrote:
| I'm a beginner on piano/keyboard - been playing daily for a
| couple of years and I think this would be a great app for me to
| push myself. However, I mostly play kids songs when my kids are
| going to sleep and they are mostly Danish.
|
| Would love to see a way to import sheets from my already
| purchased books.
|
| I realize you earn money for the content but I would happily pay
| hundred dollars or more for the app if it could just import my
| existing sheets
| the_gipsy wrote:
| iOS once touted itself as being honest. Now it doesn't show the
| price until you install the app?
| yard2010 wrote:
| Google used to advocate being good (or at least not evil) those
| days are over a long time ago. Enshitification ensues
| oellegaard wrote:
| It's free. But it does display the price if it's paid.
|
| If you browse down you'll even see the price for popular in app
| purchases
| Toutouxc wrote:
| It still shows everything, the price of the app itself and the
| prices of all IAPs. The App Store sucks in many wonderful ways,
| but pricing transparency isn't one of them.
| nxobject wrote:
| That's a little unwarranted; the App Store has always just said
| "Install" for free apps since its launch. The price otherwise
| shows up instead of the "Install" caption.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| On this note, does anyone know some books in references to
| applied music theory? I'm a pretty advanced piano player, but a
| lot of more basic piano players can make up chords to play with
| with simple tunes that sound pretty good, most of those people
| seem to know a certain of rules that I don't know. And googling
| books about piano music on google books or the likes has not
| yielded any useful results.
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| I think what you're describing is the difference between
| learning by 'top down' thinking (ie. learning what to play) vs
| learning by experimentation 'bottom up' (ie. mashing random
| things and making mistakes until you eventually learn to
| replicate your favourite mistakes)
|
| what helped me was to imagine charlie day from its always in
| sunny in philadelphia saying "idk man, the piano just speaks to
| me", then I pretend to be a rainman style idiot-savant piano
| player until it starts to sound good
| ToJans wrote:
| I'm not well versed in this, but I have the basics down:
| start by finding the bass notes, and add the melody on top.
| Most of the time the a musical phrase will end on the note
| that's in the key of the song. Combine the bass note with the
| third and fifth, and you're already halfway there...
|
| Typical chord combinations are in the 1-4-5-6, so when the
| key is in C, for the first chord (I) you start on the C, skip
| one, E, skip one and then G. These 3 notes compose the first
| chord. To get the second chord, just move your fingers one
| key to the right.
|
| A major scale in C contains the following chords if you move
| your 1-3-5 grip one key to the right each time:
|
| - I: C (C-E-G)
|
| - ii: Dm (D-F-A)
|
| - iii: Em (E-G-B)
|
| - IV: F (F-A-C)
|
| - V: G (G-B-D)
|
| - vi: Am (A-C-E)
|
| - vii: Bdim (B-D-F)
|
| Capital roman numerals indicate major chords (happy-ish),
| lowercase indicate minor (sad-ish).
|
| Just try a few combos of I, IV, V and vi with your right
| hand, while hitting the first note of the chord with your
| bass.
|
| You will instantly come to a few recognisable tunes.
|
| Up next is transposing scales: move every note two half steps
| up to get to a major scale in the key of D for example.
|
| Another handy trick is inversions: look at the individual
| notes in a chord and when switching from one chord to
| another, minimize have movement by playing some of the notes
| an octave higher or lower.
|
| This is just the start, but it should help you a long way to
| play list of the simple pop songs.
| nprateem wrote:
| I learnt with a college music theory textbook. Without that,
| it's all just meaningless rules "just because".
|
| Music Theory Remixed by Kevin Holm-Hudson is great, accessible
| but pretty long. Still, I finally understand music theory more
| or less.
| klimperfix wrote:
| If you want to go in the jazz direction, the Jazz Piano Book by
| Mark Levine [1] is great! It has everything a jazz player needs
| to know, from II - V - I voicings to scales, upper structures,
| etc.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Piano_Book
| nxobject wrote:
| Oscar Peterson has a nice series of etude books, too - it's
| not an exhaustive course, but he was a great pedagogue and
| expositor, and he really did care about the classical
| training he got as a wee one.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Both helpful, thanks for sharing.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What are some good books for composing music using DAWs?
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| nice, i was just day dreaming about a similar concept of
| collecting midi data to create fitness style visualization
|
| what would be helpful for a beginner/intermediate is if i could
| practice my scales and chords, without first telling this app
| what i'm doing, then this app could track which scales / chords /
| etc i spent most time in and where my deficiencies/gaps are
| court-jus wrote:
| It would be awesome if the file format was open and anyone could
| add their own scores to the app...
| adrianh wrote:
| Try Soundslice, which lets you import any sheet music. It has a
| PDF/photo-scanning feature plus an entire sheet music editor
| built-in.
|
| https://www.soundslice.com/
|
| I've been working on it full-time for nearly 12 years now.
|
| It doesn't do the "listen to your performance" thing -- maybe
| someday. But the other bits, such as practice tracking and
| interactive sheet music features, are all there.
| namanyayg wrote:
| While trying to learn Playing God a couple of weeks ago, I
| had a desire to loop certain parts and play them with reduced
| tempo.
|
| I thought I'll have to dev something myself.
|
| But I googled and discovered SoundSlice.
|
| My practice technique has changed, I'm learning superfast
| thanks to SoundSlice. I play it on a tablet I've got a tripod
| in my playing area.
|
| It's awesome to see the creator here, I didn't know that it's
| been going on since 12 years.
|
| And I learnt that you're the co-creator of Django as well,
| it's cool to have the product from an indie dev vs an
| (enshittification loving) corp.
|
| Just wanted to say thanks for your great work, your app has
| really made it much easier for me to learn faster tracks!
| adrianh wrote:
| Hey, that's lovely to hear! Thanks for taking the time to
| share your story.
|
| That's exactly my colleagues and I work on this -- for
| outcomes like yours. Keep making music my friend.
| smokel wrote:
| Looks nice, but after downloading it, I was a bit disappointed. I
| mistakenly assumed that this would compare to something like
| Alfred's Adult Piano Courses [1], but it's much simpler than
| that.
|
| Personally, I doubt that is wise to charge money for this. Sure,
| you put in some work, but the value is fairly low, and you'd
| probably only get payments from disappointed customers.
|
| Edit: apparently the added value comes from using a MIDI device,
| which I don't have, so my comment might be a bit too negative.
| Most piano apps support microphone input, which is easier to set
| up and attracts a larger audience.
|
| [1] https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-adult-piano-courses/b/
| FLT8 wrote:
| 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. - the feedback given seemed
| quite helpful, I like that wrong notes were highlighted, and it
| seemed to do well at ignoring a false-start that I made while
| trying it out. - I would have liked if the playback functionality
| supported MIDI too; I play with headphones on and it's a bit
| weird (and annoying for other people in the house) if the
| playback comes out of the iPad. - 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
|
| On the whole though I think it's a good app, and I intend to use
| it more. I don't share the concerns of others about the price of
| the sheet music, I think your pricing is reasonable, and assume
| it takes some effort for you to translate into a form that can be
| used.
|
| Well done, thanks for sharing.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| "I like that wrong notes were highlighted"
|
| This is such a fundamental feature that is glaringly absent
| from so much (most?) music-instruction software. I don't want
| to know only that I missed some of the notes; I want to see WTF
| I actually played, so I can adjust accordingly!
| albertru90 wrote:
| 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.
| spapas82 wrote:
| For reference "Hanon" is a classic book of piano exercises that
| improve the velocity of the pianist. It is like 150 years old but
| still heavily used everyday by a lot of professional pianists:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_in_60_E...
| oriolid wrote:
| It is also widely criticized by professional piano teachers
| (see the link above), and for good reasons.
| wccrawford wrote:
| That's not strong opposition there. One basically says it's
| boring, and the other says that only a certain technique can
| ever be good, and then it isn't even cited.
| kashunstva wrote:
| 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 could have some value if teachers and students would
| employ the concept of weight transfer from finger to finger
| with constant contact with the keyboard. But his idea of
| finger calisthenics is a relic of the 19th c.
| solarengineer wrote:
| 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.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Literally the Hanon set of books will teach you this :)
|
| But if you're a hunt-and-peck for piano, I would
| recommend stop what you're doing and go back to the very
| beginning and relearn everything properly so that you
| don't have any bad habits.
|
| As for other resources, this app looks like a good bet!
| sixo wrote:
| No they don't teach this, that's the problem! The
| exercises are good but the right technique is v different
| from what Hanon describes.
| lioeters wrote:
| > 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, like "blind" playing to learn
| where the notes are without even looking; or games where
| you can practice playing melodies. Even the idea of
| "weight transfer" seems related to computer keyboard,
| like typing without lifting your fingers too high.
| sixo wrote:
| It's subtle and best learned with a good (expensive,
| unfortunately) teacher. It's worth it, even for just a
| few lessons.
| domharries wrote:
| A good teacher is definitely best, but I found the book
| "The Foundations of Technique" by Murray McLachlan very
| useful.
| vunderba wrote:
| The taubman technique explores the practical aspects of
| piano playing from an "ergonomics first" set of
| principles and is highly recommend it if you can get any
| of Golandsky's videos. Unfortunately, it's one of those
| techniques that can be difficult to learn theoretically,
| and you may need a teacher to be able to guide you
| through the movements.
| jraph wrote:
| 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 find it a bit boring, but it seems it makes sense to
| warm up before playing and to strengthen the fingers /
| hands (although I have no evidence of this whatsoever). I
| guess warming up also helps moving your focus from
| whatever you were doing to the piano.
|
| What other ways do pianists use for this?
| oriolid wrote:
| Playing scales and arpeggios is one common warmup. For
| practicing technique, there lots and lots of etudes by
| Czerny, Burgmuller and others that have copyright
| expired.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I played a lot of Hanon as a teenager, and I confess that
| I never read the instructions. It does appear to get
| results in terms of strengthening your fingers and
| getting you used to specific patterns of movement.
|
| A couple of piano teachers suggested reading stuff while
| doing Hanon, and apparently Liszt was known to do that.
| kaidon wrote:
| > practically nothing more injurious to good technique
| and nothing more likely to induce tension than this.
|
| Oh my goodness yes. I started playing on January and
| followed the Hanon instructions with the sheets. I have
| been trying to release tension, especially around my
| flying pinky... and realized that this way of playing
| Hanon was making it worse. I am in the process of fixing
| this now, and am enjoying less tension.
| localfirst wrote:
| The purpose of Hanon is to build muscles into typically
| weaker fingers like the fourth and fifth. The exaggerated
| movements are specifically designed to build memory
| muscle and power.
|
| Hanon is battle tested and all the great virtuoso have
| gone through it whether they like it or not.
|
| The problem with modern apps and paid learning online is
| the idea that the boring and hard parts can be skipped
| with some clever marketing.
|
| If this was true then we would be churning out new
| pianists at faster rate but its falling but the age is
| dropping
| oriolid wrote:
| > and all the great virtuoso have gone through it whether
| they like it or not.
|
| It would be interesting to see some citations about this.
|
| > If this was true then we would be churning out new
| pianists at faster rate but its falling but the age is
| dropping
|
| I suspect that these days people are smart enough to ask
| _why_ should new pianists be churned out and is there
| something more valuable these people could do with their
| time.
| lukko wrote:
| This is great. Can you please add Czerny?
| albertru90 wrote:
| Added to the list.
| manojlds wrote:
| No Vision Pro?
| nxobject wrote:
| As an aside, thanks for making the app available for desktop Mac,
| even if it of course isn't explicitly designed for it. I think
| most people overestimate how many people have iPads around; I was
| never quite able to justify purchasing one given the price-how
| much I'll use it ratio.
| albertru90 wrote:
| We would love to do a more native Mac app if this takes off.
| Glad you're interested in it.
| jocoda wrote:
| 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.
| jmdots wrote:
| How about an LLM that talks to you and can see the midi notes you
| played, fine tuned to the task of course. I think the teacher
| part of learning pretty much anything is super important because
| we're social beings. Hearing "great job" is priceless when you
| really did your best.
| dragandj wrote:
| Then skip the LLM part and just add random "great job" here and
| there.
| jmdots wrote:
| I think I understated the social part. Talking to a teacher
| is part of it. Not just the gamification.
| roessland wrote:
| Awesome, I'll definitely try it.
|
| I've been paying for Piano Marvel for a few years, and there is
| tons of room for improvement in this space:
|
| - Native, non-janky app. Ideally cross-platform.
|
| - More inspiring music in lessons.
|
| - Recommendation algorithm for what piece/lesson to practice
| next.
|
| - More methods of measuring progress over time.
|
| - Spaced repetition for sight reading, technique, scales, ear
| training, sections of known pieces.
|
| - Splitting pieces automatically into overlapping sections to
| practice, RH, LH and hands together (whatever makes sense).
|
| - Simple streaming/recording features for use with piano lessons
| over video chat (screen/video/audio mixed together to a single
| stream?).
|
| - Show music theory concepts based on what you are playing, in
| the context of the current piece. E.g. what chord is being
| played, and its function. Possible continuations.
|
| My setup is a Macbook + FP-30 + USB midi cable. Having the laptop
| standing on top of the piano makes keyboard and touch pad usage
| clunky, so navigation must be simple. Also uploading custom
| scores is a must for me.
| jraph wrote:
| It doesn't have most of what you say, but it does let you
| practice on custom scores (midi files), so maybe it can be part
| of the solution:
|
| https://www.pianojacq.com/
|
| (open source, from jacquesm here)
| darylteo wrote:
| I've definitely thought about how one goes about coding an
| intelligent agent that can identify what you're playing and the
| make accurate guesses about where in the piece you're playing.
|
| The player could make mistakes as well, which means any
| intelligent algorithm would need to apply some degree of
| probabilistic calculations to find the most likely point.
|
| Very often, when practising, you'd constantly repeat passages
| multiple times. And certain passages may also be exactly the same
| in different parts of the piece as well.
|
| To me it sounds like a incredibly difficult problem to solve. Not
| sure if the recent AI advances change anything.
| smokel wrote:
| There are multiple parts to this problem, but it seems quite
| doable.
|
| Shazam can do generic look-up of music since around 2003, see
| for example this page on abracadabra [1].
|
| I'd guess that if you limit things to a piano, one could
| relatively easily find the notes being played with some Fourier
| magic, and then solve a Hidden Markov Model to find the most
| plausible position in the music. Using a MIDI interface makes
| it even simpler.
|
| [1] https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Yo, OP.
|
| That's your third post on HN in two years. All posts are promo,
| and yet you made not a single comment.
|
| If you are doing a "Show HN", it wouldn't hurt to engage with
| people a little. Otherwise it looks like a low effort drive-by ad
| and not much else.
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| And here it is highly valued and can help you more
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| Being able to track progress over time gives me the motivation to
| keep going..
| dfee wrote:
| 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 with my kids departures to any other instrument and mastery
| isn't itself the goal.
|
| Is this app the right tool? It doesn't explicitly market to this
| segment. However, there are a number of other apps out there I've
| considered as well, including PianoMarvel mentioned elsewhere.
|
| Surely, 1:1 lessons will be recommended - and I imagine they have
| their place - but I'd prefer to lean a bit harder into self-
| guided / app-guided and augment with a human tutor as necessary.
| My experience was that my tutored sessions were a bit wasteful (I
| wasn't a disciplined student, and certainly wasted a lot of time
| and money).
|
| My ideal setup is either an iMac or iPad and an electric piano.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I suggest an electronic keyboard with weighted keys and the
| free Mayron Cole lesson books.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The teacher isn't there to teach - you could do that on your
| own with enough time and energy. The teacher is there to
| preserve your passion by making sure you don't get bogged down
| in easily-fixable troughs. They will hopefully have knowledge
| of music such that you're always excited to play something new
| rather than feeling like you have to dig through a composer's
| works to find something worthwhile. They provide accountability
| for your practice and validation for when you do well.
|
| Ideally, you should use yourself as a guinea pig to test out
| the teachers in your city to find one that's best for your
| kids. In reality, dumping your two-year-old on your wife to do
| that sucks for both of you. Your local music shop can help
| steer you away from teachers with bad reputations in your city.
|
| https://youtube.com/@cedarvillemusic?si=BiZ9tF9fYcEkxcMw
|
| This guy has thorough answers to questions no one wants to ask
| (e.g. Are my hands too small? What if I'm playing for others
| and I forget how the piece goes? Why does improvisation feel
| impossible to understand? How long should I practice? Should my
| hands hurt?).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200118023642/https://howmusicw...
|
| This is the best explanation of music theory I've found and
| I've looked everywhere.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/wiki/core/modes/
|
| The FAQ on the music theory Reddit has answers to questions
| that are largely impossible to find elsewhere. "What are
| modes?" is one of those questions.
| andrepd wrote:
| In nearly any instrument it's very important to get the
| technique right from the start. It's incredibly easy to catch
| bad habits which then are much more difficult to unlearn, and
| will make your progress much slower and frustrating. So
| actually it's the other way around: pay a teacher to help him
| start, correct his posture/technique/etc, then later on you can
| wean off and continue on your own :)
| localfirst wrote:
| There's an idea that an app can replace the boring and hard. For
| somethings that may be true but piano proficiency is sight
| reading and muscle memory. This is something you cannot speed
| run.
|
| The purpose of Hanon is to teach aspiring pianists that real
| effort and grinding is required to be able to make that jump into
| the world of virtuoso and the more resistance a student puts up
| the greater the probability of them dropping out.
|
| I'm just throwing my two cents as a someone trained in classical
| piano. Coding is also similar in that if you skip the tough and
| boring part of your journey it will not set you up with the solid
| fundamentals to tackle complicated problems.
|
| Mastering a piece is not that different from mastering
| programming.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| 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?
| tzs wrote:
| Are you thinking of "Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chang
| [1]?
|
| [1] http://www.pianopractice.org/
| peteforde wrote:
| 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.
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