Playground Forums

it becomes a fight to get the note to strike exactly on top of the notes. ;) I had this problem too. It took me a long time to realise that trying to watch the cursor line up with the notes is the wrong thing to do. You have to LISTEN for the timing and play using your ears not your eyes. Most of m...

I learnt Hanon #1 in C major and was using it for a while. I think it’s okay, and it does work out fingers 4 and 5 more than regular scales do.

I sometimes run through it a couple of times as a warm up, but now that I’m onto the hands together scales for my grade level I kind of prefer to do those.

My impression is that the app responds differently to different songs. I don’t find that it’s wrong as such, but on some songs it is unbelievably picky about late notes. As a beginner my timing isn’t good enough to be absolutely perfect every time, so you end up playing notes a fraction early just t...

I went straight from Rookie to Intermediate lessons without spending time limiting myself to Rookie songs. I didn’t find it a problem. Probably the only thing I found a bit tricky was moving into songs with more sharps and flats. Maybe spending time on more Rookie level songs would have made that tr...

andrewwegierski wrote:So, there are no lessons about the pedals right now.

Well, no, apart from the lesson about the pedal, Lesson 35, intermediate bootcamp.

Sight-reading practice would be good as well.
If the Playground Sessions instant feedback keyboard app was combined with Piano Marvel’s sight reading competition and Sight Reading Factory’s unlimited customisable difficulty sheet music it would be awesome.

I tried Anki for music sight-reading training and quite frankly it’s really bad. While it is excellent for language training, sight reading is much more mechanical and the whole Anki “repeat what you don’t know” concept doesn’t work nearly as well, for me anyway. There are much better options; googl...

But maybe too soon for that. I don’t think it’s ever too soon, because you don’t want the note names to become a crutch. I’d suggest turning the note names off straight away and learning the mnemonics (Every Good Boy Does Fine etc.) so you can figure out each song yourself from scratch. Look on You...

No, I think it's a good choice. I went as low as I dared (Yamaha P45) and while it is perfectly fine for an absolute beginner, really I am regretting not spending a bit more like you have done. Good luck with Playground Sessions, having worked my way through the rookie bootcamp I think it is very in...

There are also plenty of phone apps for basic sight reading training. You really do need to bite the bullet and learn it. Start with a few landmark ones as per the previous post. I was initially a bit worried about getting too dependent on the numbers so I turned them off as soon as I’d understood t...