Practice Software that Allows Importing Sheet Music?

[a.cardilini]

G'day Folks,

I really like the way that playground sessions helps to teach songs progressively with feedback, and also how it allows you to isolate sections to practice.

I was wondering if Playground Sessions, or another piece of software, allows you to import sheet music into it to practice with the feedback functionality?

Cheers,
Adam

[EFlatMajor]

Hello Adam,

I am not aware of any software that does what you are asking for natively. The closest thing I could think of is MuseScore. It is open source music composition software that (with plug-ins) might be able to do what you are asking. I tried it a while back with the Hanon exercises and was never able to get it to work fully.

PGS is a great app. I am not sure if you are on a 30-day demo or you are a lifetime member like me, but it is well worth the money. Rewrite of the desktop version is coming, although the company won't tell us when. I am being conservative and hope this new version is in beta testing by the end of the summer.

In terms of the import functionality, don't expect it any time soon. PGS makes its money through the subscription fees and sales at the song store. Allowing imports might cut into the song store revenue.

Anyway, good luck and there is almost always someone here that can answer your questions.

[OCZen]

Piano Marvel does this. As I recall, they accept MusicXML uploads, which MuseScore does. I tried this a few times and had some success, though it wasn't perfect.

[FlatPanda]

I am not aware of any software that does what you are asking for natively. The closest thing I could think of is MuseScore. It is open source music composition software that (with plug-ins) might be able to do what you are asking. I tried it a while back with the Hanon exercises and was never able to get it to work fully.

I also played around with MuseScore, but a functionality like PGS (a.k.a. "recoginise what you are playing on a piano and correlate that with the opened score") is not implemented and not possible with plugins (because plugins don't have access to the MIDI devices). It would definitely be possible to implement this feature in MuseScore, but it would be a pretty big undertaking, and the current developer community there won't do it, based on many-many-many good reasons. The closest one with such functionality is Synthesia, but that comes with its own "fun" and bugs and limitations.

In terms of the import functionality, don't expect it any time soon. PGS makes its money through the subscription fees and sales at the song store. Allowing imports might cut into the song store revenue.

It's not only that, that they make the money with the songs. It'd also put a heavy bourden on support. Can you imagine, if somebody is not computer-savvy and having all kinds of errors, misformatted sheets, unrecognised symbols? Not to mention that you have to be aware of the limitations of the software (hopefully less limitations in the next version, but I still expect many), as in no repeats or dynamics. Just "cleaning up" the music XML and making it ready for PGS requires a lot of information and precise work.