Tablet piano instruction?

December 23, 2013 9:29 AM

I have an electric, piano-weighted keyboard that I want to learn how to play. I can't afford lessons right now. It has MIDI in and out connectors. Is there a hardware/software combo that will take that MIDI out connection, plug it into an Android or iOS tablet, and provide a more interactive teaching experience?

Hopefully the program would be able to provide feedback on my tempo, the force I'm hitting the keys with, (and whether I'm hitting the right keys or not, of course), have a built-in metronome, etc. etc.

Is this a thing?

posted by jsturgill to Education (4 answers total)

The hardware half of your question would be taken care of with a USB MIDI/audio interface. It could be as simple as something like this if you can adapt the USB to a size compatible with whichever tablet you have. Slightly more adaptable & powerful would be something like this, which is what I have for recording MIDI and running Mainstage on a Mac. Hopefully someone else can offer some insight on the software half of your question.
posted by jeffjon at 10:03 AM on December 23, 2013

Sythesia doesn't meet all of your requirements but it may be worth trying.
posted by jmsta at 10:21 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

I honestly don’t know if that would help as much as you think. A big part of learning is hearing what’s happening when you play, and learning to hear. Focusing on the visual feedback might just be an unhelpful distraction. It sells software but I don’t know that it makes better players.
posted by bongo_x at 1:00 PM on December 23, 2013

Response by poster: I think there's a bootstrap problem here: how can I teach myself to hear properly starting from zero knowledge? A machine that actually understands what I'm playing is a world and a half better than the printed page that I need to decipher, execute, and judge myself on, all without the benefit of expert knowledge or experience.

There was at least one chord that I realized I was playing consistently wrong for a few days before I discovered my mistake, for example.
posted by jsturgill at 3:12 PM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]