Skoove: Learn to Play Piano

I think this is the best piano tutor app out there, but it needs work. The inability for it to properly recognize notes is frustrating and interrupts flow and learning. I purchased the cords to hook up my keyboard to my iPad, so hopefully that helps, but there is no work around when playing my acoustic piano, so I'll have to play my keyboard when using this app, also frustrating. I would also like to have more control of the sheet music in the lessons. I would like to press pause and then be able to scroll through the sheet music. Right now when you hit stop it takes you back to the beginning of the sheet music automatically. At least allow me to pause it where I'm at and practice and repeat the current notes at my own pace, or have an option in the lesson to review all sheet music and scroll through it there. For what it is and the need to purchase cords, $5 a month should be the max for a subscription.

I’m 60 years old and want to play piano for enjoyment. I purchased Skoove and Flowkey. I started with lessons in both and find both very good. I find the lessons in Skoove very doable and have made good progress in about 6 weeks. I can read music and play songs with both hands. I love it! I practice every day because I want to improve. I would give 5 stars if I could slow down playing with the band and increase the speed once I became more proficient. I find the transition from practicing to the band too challenging. I also find the messages that appear while playing can be distracting and sometimes block my view of the music. I appreciate the feedback for my playing but they appear in the middle of my playing sometimes. I like the way music theory is taught through the lesson in playing, connecting the concept to piano playing instead of separately. The arrangements for beginner level are very good and are enjoyable to play. I wish there were longer versions to play outside of lessons for practice and enjoyment. I would also like more holiday music at this level. Overall, it is a great app and I love connecting my iPad to my Yamaha keyboard through a midi cord for accuracy, although I found it also works fairly well through the microphone.

To all of the people having trouble getting the app to pick up notes from their piano/keyboard: I have had this problem with all of the piano apps that I have tried and I figured out that if I transpose my keyboard, usually up one from the default, it will register the notes. If going up one doesn’t work, I would recommend fiddling with it until the notes register, as other keyboards may be set up differently from mine. Hope this helps! Note: I am giving this review more as advice than an actual review, so I will be giving it five stars automatically, regardless of my actual rating.

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I’ve really been enjoying getting back into piano practice with this app and for the most part the more advance I’ve gotten in the app the more the bugs are starting to affect my practice. The app has a hard time recognizing all the notes when you play chords which means the lesson stops until is hears the right note, this means I have to play the same note many times until the app registers it which is annoying and messes with the flow of the song. I would also the ability to read through the sheet music on my own and practice specific parts of the song without running the whole lesson which right now is not possible. Overall I love the idea and the app has helped me but i would love to see more improvements!

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This is an initial review after completing a couple of beginner lessons. I’ve been using the app in the acoustic mode and it’s possible that this will change once I get the MIDI cable. The app does not hold you to any standard. You play a piece extremely sloppily - mess up the note lengths, rests, dynamics - and you still get a green checkbox at the end. It seems to be designed for the illusion of progress - to make people think they’re making progress when they’re clearly not. On top of that, its note recognition in the acoustic mode is extremely hit or miss, which totally messes up the flow of the piece. The positive is that it is engaging - even if you can only hit one note they’ll make you hit it to a backing track, so you feel a sense of accomplishment, compared to practicing random scales for days under a proper teacher. The downside is an extreme lack of rigor - you wouldn’t have developed any real skills/techniques powering through this content. If these are the limitations of the acoustic mode, there’s no reason for it to exist. If they exist with the MIDI cable as well, then this is barely a video game. I’ll update the review as I make more progress.