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My grandnephew is 11 and should be learning piano from a teacher but with busy parents hasn't established that in his life yet.

Can you recommend the best Note learning games and apps.
He has his own digital grand piano and the ambition to start learning to read notes on a staff and finding them on his piano.

His grandmother, (my sister) is a musician, former band director and music teacher.

He started piano with a very unproductive method. (not sure what it was called). Learning piano by rote and not suggesting that students practice. Very unusual program in Phoenix, AR.

Any and all suggestions welcome.

Check out Piano Marvel, Piano Maestro, and Musiah.

Thanks Groove On, I looked them up on their websites. I passed those suggestions on to my sister.
Have you used any of them?

I use Piano Maestro, mainly because it works with my acoustic piano (via the iPad's mic). I've been addicted to it for nearly 8 months now. I also really like Piano Marvel, which I practice on occasionally at my brother's house. But I don't have a digital piano, so I don't use Piano Marvel as often. I haven't used Musiah.

Both work as advertised - 1,000+ progressive sight-reading pieces with instant feedback on note accuracy and rhythm reading. To me Piano Maestro is more in the moment, and I play a lot of competitive musical games with my niece and nephew on it. We can use it on almost any keyboard or piano we find. Piano Marvel has more traditional lesson approach which I also find appealing. It requires a digital piano hooked up to a computer.

Piano Maestro shows only scrolling notes, 2-4 measures at a time, while Piano Marvel has static notes and can show more measures at a time, so it's more like reading a paper score.

*** And most importantly!!! These programs work 100x better if you've taken proper lessons from a teacher before hand, because you'll have a good idea what you should be practicing instead of figuring it out in your own. By themselves the programs will only help you learn the mechanics of sight-reading, but there's a whole lot more to playing music than just "typing" the notes.

... a few more apps to checkout: Simply Piano, Tenuto, iRealPro, Scales-A-Practice Assistant

... a few more apps to checkout: Simply Piano, Tenuto, iRealPro, Scales-A-Practice Assistant

Thanks I'll look these up as well.

And there is also Yousician for multiple platforms.

But what we mostly use is Piano Maestro, I use it regularly and my daughter sometimes. It also has the Czerny books which our teacher sometimes uses. We got a one year subscription after I went through all the free levels.

Simply Piano I think is very good (its "jump back" mechanism is really good), but it does not slow down yet and I really need that.

For a very young beginner the same company has "Piano Dust Buster" that is more simple than Piano Maestro.

I like NoteTrainer. It's available on Kindle Fire or Ipad, you can get a free or paid version. There is practice mode to use, obviously for practice. It shows one note at a time. The play mode brings in the notes slowly at first, then picks up the pace as the game progresses. You can set it for either bass or treble, depending on what you need to practice.

Good recommendations: Note Trainer, Simply Piano, and Piano Dust Buster. I'll check them all online.

I'm also a fan of Yousician - I prefer it over Piano Maestro although the latter is better for children. Flashnote Derby or Staff Wars are skill-and-drill games for note learning, loads of my students like Staff Wars (though as person whose special interest is in games, I'm not a huge fan).

ok, Yousician, Flashnote Derby, Staff Wars. I'll see what they do.
Thanks for the suggestions, Rebecca. This has been a valuable thread.