Piano Marvel - Lessons & Music

Excellent learning system and very good online support. thank you

If you are new to piano do NEVER play. It is only practice for piano pros. The reason I am am giving it two stars is because I have heard amazing things about this app and that it has taught many people. All in all ok app for practice but bad for learning

Great app if you are interested in learning the piano as the process is very carefully graded so the next step is always only a little harder, making it within reach, so one doesn’t get discouraged. The green notes/red notes after a piece has been played also provide instant feedback and opportunity to reduce the repeating of mistakes aiding improvement rather than the ingraining of errors. Easy hand together/separate playing again helps with deliberate practice as discussed in Peak by Ericsson and Pool, and other popular self-help books, as the path for serious training and improvement. The SASR tests for sight reading are also a great help for speeding up note recognition and playing. And lastly the library is full of good stuff, and the option to upload your own music in to Piano Marvel (from Finale, or MuseScore etc), is brilliant for speeding up learning a piece, for everybody from students doing their grades to, well, anybody.. Simply a superb app for learning to play the piano.

Good stuff

..is what this app should be called - latest update (1.9.6) doesn’t give you a score feedback.

The four other piano tuition apps I’ve tried are very colourful and funky, but a real let-down when it comes to making proper progress at your own pace and with an eye on being able to play well. There’s music theory, lots of practice options, a trophy progression system to keep you motivated and amazing support if you need help. I’ve gone fro level one to level five in just over a year. And I’m a real giver-upper usually. It’s the first time I’ve persevered with and enjoyed learning an instrument. The iPad to Casiotone piano works perfectly every time, every note is heard correctly so feedback is spot-on, and the range of music is pretty good. I hate the ear training exercises, but I know they’re good for me. It’s a staggeringly good system.

Upgraded to premium but the payment is not recognised, the app just freezes when you try to get it to recognise the subscription, and the address given to contact support is an invalid email address. Beware!

I’ve always wanted to learn the piano and read music correctly. I tried on my own and through Udemy but it wasn’t working for me. So lockdown learning went in a different direction — Hello Piano Marvel, this teaches you as you go along through Method and Technics section, you have videos and many song scores to try out including Scales Ninja, Alfreds learning and SASR tests. This is going to keep me busy for a while! I love it!

I've been playing piano a few weeks now, and have trialled most of the learning apps out there. I wish to learn to sight-read sheet music, and for this purpose Piano Marvel wins hands down. It is not as gamified or colourful-looking as Simply Piano, and the song library doesn't suit my taste like Flowkey's, but Piano Marvel is the first app where I have felt that I am making good solid progress, not only in sight reading but also in music theory and piano technique. I enjoyed Flowkey for a while but soon realised the experience was nothing like reading sheet music - I soon found its scrolling single line a hindrance, and there was no way to switch to a sheet music view. Simply Piano is better on that score (!), but I felt very hampered by having to get exercises right all the time before I could move on. Piano Marvel is actually very flexible - you can jump between levels if you like and try harder stuff, but it is structured to encourage you to work at your level - much like a real teacher. And much like a good human teacher, it praises good results without forcing them - as you progress you fill your trophy cabinet with pianos - accurate exercises earn gold pianos, but less-perfect results get silver ones. There are other ways of tracking progress in charts and graphs. The SASR sight reading test is very revealing (and fiendishly clever in how it adjusts the test to fit your level) and it is encouraging to see that I have made solid progress in just a few days. Technically, Piano Marvel seems very good. I have been involved in software development and PM strikes me as the most 'mature' app I have tried so far. There is a LOT of lesson content under its clean, simple interface - much more than the other apps I've tried. Much of that content seems based on 'old-fashioned' piano exercises and that is a concrete strength - in fact it has a sophisticated feature for piano teachers to track multiple students' progress, so strikes me as an app that over time could well have developed in response to the needs of piano students and teachers alike. I only wish Piano Marvel's song library was a bit more appealing to my punky old English taste - but then, once I can read sheet music I'll be able to play whatever I like!

No longer free to do the SASR tests. You can only do 3 tests and then they make you pay. No longer worth it unless you want to pay the subscription free.