Something new to try… Piano Marvel.
I have been so busy and tired lately. I haven’t been practicing the piano at all. I was pondering the whys and wherefores as I was starting to practice again, and I was thinking that maybe I needed to sign back up for lessons. Then it occurred to me that there had to be somebody offering piano lessons on the Internet. Heck, even Apple was in that game, with piano lessons in Garageband.
I did some researching and came up with Piano Marvel. It was highly recommended and is $15/month (after the 30 day free trial). It has lessons that start at the very beginning, and you see the music on the screen and play along with a connected MIDI keyboard. If you play the right notes at the right time, you get a better score out of 100. 80 or better gets a bronze award for the lesson, 90 or better is silver and 96 or better is gold. There are something like 1200 lessons plus a library of thousands of songs to learn.
Here’s the setup: old Mac Mini connected via a USB-MIDI interface to the piano, and a headphone to 1/4 stereo jack, so that the sound from the Mac plays through the piano. Probably a nicer keyboard than 99% of the Piano Marvel users have access to, if I say so myself. 😊
I did it for me, but like Tammy mentioned, showing it to Miranda and Ian this morning kept the kids out of Tammy’s hair while she slept in. Miranda wasn’t thrilled, but Ian has really taken to it. We’ll see how it works out by the end of the free month.
