Simply Piano: Addictive App for Lockdown and Beyond
I only found out about the Simply Piano app when I discovered my 8 year old son sitting at the piano with the tablet. Amazingly he was playing notes, in time, from sheet music scrolling across the screen…
Over the last year we’ve all become a lot more reliant on apps for helping us teach our children. Our kids (aged 8 and 6) use a bewildering array of them for home schooling, let alone the complimentary apps they’ve been using for years anyway.
So I’m surprised that it never occurred to me to look into music apps when their music classes were postponed (indefinitely) last March.
As parents we are not a musical family – though I would add that like most people we both wish we were able to play a musical instrument – so the only way we could properly teach Harrison and Ella was via music lessons.
Until the pandemic had other ideas.
To be fair, Harrison had lost interest in the guitar long before Covid struck, but Ella was really thriving on the piano. So we decided to invest the money we’d saved from lessons into a good quality junior digital piano.
Ella, of course, loved the piano as soon as she saw it. And so did Harrison. So ever since we bought it they have both been spending more and more time bashing away on it, without any proper instruction. We tried You Tube videos and similar tutorials, but the problem was always keeping the kids focused on the video. Also the lack of feedback or pace that comes with proper lessons can’t be replicated on You Tube. So I’d basically resigned myself to the piano being a toy, until music lessons are finally allowed again.
Until Harrison came across Simply Piano on his tablet.
The first I knew about this (call me irresponsible) was when I found him sitting at the piano with the tablet resting on it. To my astonishment he was playing notes, in time, from sheet music that was scrolling across the screen.
I watched in awe as he hit the relevant keys as the notes passed from right to left, and he was rewarded with a tick every time he got to the end. Call me a Luddite but this looked like sorcery to me. Obviously it wasn’t and Simply Piano is capable of recognising the correct notes via the tablet’s microphone. Simply Piano is very intuitive – did I mention that Harrison set it up himself? – and gets you to learn a few bars of music at a time, first by listening to it and then by reading it from the staff.
After you’ve learned these short sections, Simply Piano puts them together with a backing track and the music scrolls across the screen, while you play some of the notes from the song. You don’t play every note, just some key ones to accompany the song.
And here’s the clever part, you have to play the notes at the correct moment in order to turn the notes blue (basically a tick); if you hit the wrong note it turns red (a cross). If you don’t get to the note on time a hint pops up to show you where the note is on your piano, and the note turns yellow.
Simply Piano then uses your results to either let you progress, or to repeat a few bars if you’ve hit too many yellow notes. If you’re struggling and hitting more than a couple of red notes then you go into practice mode and practice at a slower tempo and a metronome (at least I think that’s the right word) helps you keep time.
The great thing about Simply Piano for me is that Harrison finds it addictive. He actually wants to learn and is desperate to progress to the next stage, so much so that after a week he was begging me to upgrade from the free version to the paid version.
I’m not going to lie, at this point I was very reluctant to go ahead. Not that I mind paying subscriptions if they will be used. But with my children I’m never sure how quickly they will lose interest in something. Because of this I’d prefer to have a monthly subscription, but that’s not available on Simply Piano. What you can buy however is annual, six-monthly or quarterly plans. The longer you buy the subscription for, the cheaper it works out per month.
The premium version of Simply Piano doesn’t just open up more in-depth learning exercises, but also a huge library of songs to practice your new skills with. Harrison is familiar with a lot of the pop songs in the library so there’s always a good selection corresponding to the level he’s at. Each song is split into smaller sections so he’s not overwhelmed while learning. Instead, they follow the same learning pattern as the exercises. He listens to a short section and then plays it back as the notes scroll along.
As I write this he’s currently learning Imagine by John Lennon.
The app will play the notes for, “you may say that I’m a dreamer”, then he plays along with them, and then it moves onto “but I’m not the only one” and again he follows this. At the end he plays a longer section of the song. When you play the complete song, Simply Piano shows you how many notes you got right and how well you kept up the rhythm and tempo. It also gives you a rating out of three stars.
So far, I think that the investment is well worthwhile, especially while music lessons are not a viable option. Ella hasn’t started using the app yet but we’re going to get her started soon and both myself and their mum, Alena, have also set up profiles for ourselves. One premium subscription with Simply Piano allows up to five profiles all learning at their own pace, so I fully intend to make use of it.
I can’t see any of us catching Harrison up though as he’s already getting pretty good with his left hand as well as his right one (he’s right handed). I watch in amazement as he flies through the exercises, hitting blue note after blue note and being rewarded by the magic green tick at the end.
His hands are literally shaking at times, he’s so desperate to get the exercise right and move on!
In fact he’s so obsessed with the app that I’m starting to think I chose the wrong “goal” for his profile. I selected “I want to learn piano as a new hobby” but then again there wasn’t an option for “I want to learn piano as a new addiction”.
Simply Piano is available on iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
This looks like a great little app. It’s something I think my son would enjoy too.