Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Thoughts on Pianomarvel

Hi

I'm a newbie.

Just purchased my first digital piano and waiting excitedly for its arrival!

I've been teaching myself piano for a few months on a 1990s keyboard via Pianomarvel and wondered if anyone else had used this software and how they were progressing?

By way of background, I had piano lessons for a few months as a teenager but gave up when I went to uni as the only piano I had access to was used by music degree students and I felt bad taking up piano time to play twinkle twinkle little star while they were playing masterpieces. That was 15 years ago so I'm basically starting again. I have some music knowledge from playing the flute and I'm therefore much better with treble clef than base clef but I'm slowly improving.

Current plan is to work through Pianomarvel course then consider proper lessons to progress further. Who knows how long that will take though!

Welcome to the forum Microdot.

I seriously considered self teaching when I started 20 months ago and Pianomarvel was to my mind at the time a great program. I was just about to commit to a yearly subscription but opted for a teacher instead. It does not seem to be as popular as other methods and I don't know why that is. But good luck with it and look forward to hearing your progress and thoughts on the program.

Since Piano Marvel positions their site mainly as a practice platform, one should either be self-teaching using a method book or have a teacher to complement the sessions on Pianomarvel.

I have seen another similar site from Australia called musiah.com but no real feedback from users other than the website testimonials.

Artistworks amongst their various instrument lessons has Classical piano lessons Piano Lessons — Beginner to Conservatory Level — with The Peery Method with video feedback from the teacher. Sounds interesting but haven't seen much user feedback here.

I didn't have any prior piano or music experience before I started with PianoMarvel about a week ago. Yesterday I had my first private piano lesson and I found out I wasn't using ties and rests correctly.

Even so, I've been having fun with PianoMarvel doing the practice stuff and learning some songs, so I may keep messing around with it at least until my free trial month runs out.

Interesting. Are you saying that Piano Marvel did not detect your wrong playing of tied notes and rests ?

On the tied notes I started out by pressing the key/chord at both ends, and the program does detect that 2nd press as an error, so then I figured I was supposed to hold the key/chord down for the first note count and lift off at the second one. Yeah, I know, that doesn't make much sense but it was the best I could figure out, or so I thought. So anyway, the program apparently doesn't have a way to detect how long you hold a key/chord down.

Same idea for the rests, the program doesn't detect when you've released the key(s).

I tried out a few when I was looking around for a self-tutoring piano lesson app.

Piano Marvel I thought was really nice, but I got a bit lost in the menus. If I remember correctly the lessons are divided into two and I wasn't really sure what order I was supposed to do them in. They also seemed to have quite a few classical pieces to learn, which is great if you just want to learn individual pieces to play.

I also tried Playground Sessions which, again, is fantastic if you want to learn something from their repertoire, but it's mostly modern R&B, which I'm not really into. I also didn't really get along with their Bootcamp lessons. They were all a bit chord-lead and that wasn't really what I was after. I'll still use it to teach me one-off pieces, I think, but I'm not sure the subscription is worth it for the Bootcamp and the small discount on track purchases.

I also gave Piano Maestro on the iPad a go. This I still use from time to time when I'm a bit bored of whatever else I'm doing. The free pieces are all a bit basic, but the harder ones and the Piano Pronto pieces with a background track (which require a subscription) are really fun to play and learn. I tend to pay for a month every now and then when I feel like something different.

The one I use as my main learning tool right now is Musiah, though, as it felt the most structured, and most like how I remember piano lessons being structured as a kid. Each piece building on the knowledge from the last. I also really like that it doesn't let you move on to the next piece until you've played it to a satisfactory quality. It also won't let you move onto the next level until you've performed 3 pieces selected at random… which is actually a bit of a buzz. It also scatters in some theory quizzes in between lessons.

The downsides are that it uses different synth sounds for different pieces, presumably to keep the kids entertained, but as I'm learning piano I'd really rather hear piano so I tend to turn the Mac's volume down and my piano's volume up which seems to work OK. You're also taught by a weird Saturday morning TV-style alien, but don't let that put you off either (plus, a new version a due out in the next couple of months which would make him, and the cartoon storyline, optional. Tbh, though, I think I'd miss them now!)

I think most of those have a free trial.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the replies.

I too tried out musiah (seemed good but thought the alien would get annoying) and playground sessions (gets you playing tunes quickly but lack of syllabus - I did the whole boot camp and learned a lot but didn't progress much).

I have been very impressed with piano marvel so far though. The lessons are very well structured with each building on the last. The 2 sections (method and technique) support each other with method teaching a new concept and technique reinforcing it. I like the way it introduces scales gradually and the associated chords. I'm learning more quickly than I ever have before and enjoying the challenge of learning chords and scales which I was not disciplined enough to practice myself.

It does have downsides in that it can't correct bad technique and some of the tunes used in lessons are tedious but it does make things stick very quickly by eg several different lessons reinforcing the same chords or intervals.

There is also a repertoire section which is split by level. This allows you to pick a piece you enjoy at the right level to work on alongside the method and technique sections. I find this particularly useful for progressing as you don't pick something too difficult and become disheartened.

My reasons for not having formal lessons are due to my job making it difficult to commit to a lesson at a specified time each week. Being able to practice each day as I have a spare 20 + mins works well for me. I find the monthly subscription to be less than a single lesson would cost and for now it's exactly what I need. It suits my style of learning.

First post on Piano World! Be gentle with me.
I've used both Musiah and Piano Marvel over the past year and found they each have their strengths and weaknesses. The support for both programs is excellent. I even received a phone call from Brendan at Musiah on one occasion when I was getting a bit frustrated. I am an older beginner (60+) and am probably a bit slower on the uptake than many. I love classical music played well, which is NOT what I produce atm.
I have just changed over to Alfred's Self-Teaching Adult Piano Course as I felt I needed a change from the online approach, with a little more help. I've just started learning Love Somebody (p59) using the earlier pages as revision. I like the idea of using a course that so many others have used successfully. I don't have a teacher at this stage, but realise that this would be a good idea. I would just like to not look like a complete klutz when I show up for lesson 1.

I believe Musiah has more sophisticated AI software which monitors your performance very closely - for pitch, timing and duration. However I found it to be pretty exacting and I wasn't enjoying the stress very much. It is a bit inflexible in my view and holds you on a certain tune until your master it to an acceptable level. The cartoon characters get a bit tiresome at times and I felt like I had a fairly demanding teacher criticising my mistakes (even if he was a large purple reptile). I haven't tried the new version without the cartoons. One beef I had with Musiah was the accompaniment and voicing used in the pieces. I found this quite off-putting as I prefer to hear the sound of the instrument I am playing.

When I swapped to Piano Marvel I enjoyed the greater flexibility in being able to try tunes and exercises from any level I wanted. There is also a huge repertoire of tunes well matched to whatever level you want. You use the sound of your own instrument, rather than a synthesiser. The software is a work in progress, but has improved with the recent change to a browser based version. I have a Mac, but run Windows in Boot Camp. They are also very generous in providing free downloads of music and lessons as PDFs to subscribers so you can practice offline and develop reading skills. I can still use these printouts to play even though I am no longer subscribed to PM. I learned a lot through PM, including some fun rote pieces like Chop Sticks and Heart and Soul. There are good videos on YouTube of most of the PM lesson pieces. I was on Level 3A in PM before I changed over to the Alfred book.

Sorry about the long post but people were wanting independent feedback on these packages. Testimonials need to be treated with caution.

Welcome!



Yes, that's probably my biggest "complaint" now. I can completely understand why it uses lots of synth instrument sounds to keep kids interested, but I'm really in it to learn to play *piano*, so a piano sound would be preferable to me too.

The inflexibility has either become less inflexible with the new beta, or I'm getting better, or I'm becoming less impatient. The new version makes it easier to turn the AI off so you can practice a piece on your own for a while if you fancy a break from the prompts and pauses, so maybe that helps.



Yeah, I gave Piano Marvel 2.0 a go and, while it's as ugly as ever, it contains a load of great content. Lots of good ragtime too. I felt like Musiah gave a better structured learning method though, so I've stuck with that for now. I might return to Piano Marvel when I've finished Musiah for its library, although Playground Sessions appear to be planning to support custom music/midi files in the future which would be perfect.

Thanks for the detailed updates on Musiah, Piano Marvel and Playground sessions.

Congratulations on sticking with Musiah. Turning off the AI would be a plus because most of the time you know what you've done wrong and Musiah gets a little tetchy at times. I think I bailed after Level 2. Amazingly I used to get stressed with the performance tests. I muffed one tune by getting the wrong starting position and was subsequently pelted with virtual tomatoes by the unhappy audience. It was all quite traumatic.

I've now made the decision to sign up with a real teacher ASAP. Hopefully she'll keep her tomatoes in the fridge.
I figure I want to make the most of my time at this stage of life so it's a bit silly to pinch pennies.

Further update on pianomarvel...

I've now reached level 5b and from what I have seen to date, levels 1 - 4 seem far more comprehensive and build on skills more slowly. Level 5 is still good but it feels as though the later levels have had less time/attention than the earlier one. Perhaps this is because the majority of students are in the earlier stages. It was at this point that I decided to have proper lessons too as I seemed to be reaching the limits of what the programme could do versus getting a proper teacher.

I've been fiddling with the settings this evening while practicing, and fired off an email to Brendan at Musiah. Setting all lessons to piano sound instead of synth instruments isn't something on their development roadmap, BUT! I discovered an almost perfect workaround.

The new Musiah Unity beta has an "Instrument volume" control, and by turning that down to zero and loading Pianoteq in the background (Garageband works too) I was able to play along with "real" piano sounds!

Of course, turning the instrument volume down and your piano's speakers up would work too, but I mainly practice in the evening and need both the instruction, metronome and piano to play through my headphones together.

Anyway, hope that helps anyone else who's been bothered by this.

Good work devising the workaround Trevor. You can expect a detailed reply from Brendan. His customer service is A1.
I guess one reason Musiah tells you to turn down your keyboard and use the synth sounds is the practical difficulty of using headphones and listening to another source at the same time - be it a computer program, DVD or CD. When using Piano Marvel I normally listen to my keyboard through headphones and play PM through the speakers. That way the natives don't need to listen to my clumsy efforts.
Apart from growing a third ear, an alternative would be to use a mixer to supply the headphones from two sources.
Of course if you are home alone there's no problem.
Peter

If your digital piano/keyboard has a "line in" then you might be able to connect the headphone or line out from your computer to it and get all sound through the piano speakers. (With the option to plug headphones in to the piano and have all sound through them.)

I just wanted to chime in since I'm in a similar place as an adult who is learning and continually searching for a way to learn that fits my schedule. I started about a year ago with weekly private lessons and the progress was slow. Sometimes I'd be drowned in work one week and not practice and the next week I might consume the new info fast enough that I was hoping for more. This lasted a few months. I stopped playing for a couple months, and then purchased a playground sessions subscription about 4 months ago. I've enjoyed the bootcamp lessons and I think I've developed some understanding of what to do, but perhaps there hasn't been enough variety of exercises. I still really like the video explanations.

I've recently upgraded to a Roland RD 800 (I know, overkill) and set it up in the living room and hooked it up to my 2 channel system. my enjoyment has gone way up mostly due to the fact I like the feel so much more than my $100 keyboard with plastic keys. I'm not playing next to my computer now so I got the iPad camera connection set up. I've been bugging the pianomarvel support team regularly as they keep saying the iPad app is days from release.

So I searched around a little and stumbled on "the piano" app from massive technologies. I really like this app. After playing with it for a week, I paid for the lifetime $20 subscription. It interfaces with your keyboard and has wonderful graphics and also tools to help you learn several hundred modern and classical songs. You can adjust the playback speed and enable looping on parts of the song for practice. I recommend checking this out. It has a free version with limited songs. I'm enjoying it quite a bit now and look forward to future enhancements. This app isn't a complete instructional app, so I'm still anxiously awaiting the pianomarvel ipad app release, even if pianomarvel seems slightly targeted toward kids.

I do think I'll try private lessons at some point again but maybe less frequently just to get feedback on what online lessons lack.

Even though it isn't out yet, I suspect piano marvel's app will be the best learning app available in the near future. If you are using another app that works great, let me know as I may want to give it a try.

I hadn't heard of this and had a quick search. Is this the app you're talking about?

Yes, I actually have the iPhone and iPad app and was able to share the lifetime subscription across devices. It may only work with newer phones/iPads, but it is quite nice and I believe I can be fairly critical and rarely recommend things.

I've requested a couple updates (like having the app play one hand while you play the other and having a view similar to score view where the notes are in treble/bass clefs). Support said they are working on updates. I think you'll be impressed after playing with it. and if you pay for it as I did, you can use the usb interface to the keyboard.

I've been playing along with the songs using the piano roll view. I do hope they'll add a treble/bass clef view. There is a mode where it only advances to the next note after you've played the right note combos, but I've found just playing along with mistakes and using the looping function (just left of the stop button) is best for me. After you hit that looping button, 2 yellow lines pop up that you can slide to the start and end of the part of the song you are working on. I've had to slow a couple songs under 50% speed to learn them initially but I'm creeping the speed up now and it is working pretty well.

Oh, ok, so it's just like Synthesia, but without the ability to read the notes? I was wondering where is displayed the sheet music because I couldn't see any in the screenshots or promo video. I guess it doesn't.