Read Music - Faster 5

Sometimes you have to throw plans out the window to get ahead. Originally, I would have liked to develop different apps for the different disciplines of "playing a note on the instrument", "naming a note" and "playing a note name on the instrument". These are the common exercises that I playfully implement with my piano students, and which should enable a relaxed and quick approach to notation and note naming. Now I have decided to combine these functions in one app, that is, to expand the existing app accordingly. "Note naming" is the first one to be added.

Note naming

"Note naming" was supposed to be realized with a speech recognition. However, I was never satisfied with the results. The recognition was always too slow, was tied to the internet for a long time and thus, in my opinion, not usable for this purpose. After all, the "note naming" game should be as responsive as the original game. In the end, the point is to improve reading speed and have fun!

A keyboard for entering the note names would have been obvious. However, this would not be fair to all instrumentalists, because not everyone knows their way around the keyboard. In addition, the black keys are ambiguous. So are the white ones when enharmonic equivalents come into play, a feature the app has always supported. The exercises can also span many octaves, which could not be mapped at all on an iPhone.

The solution is a quiz now. For each note displayed, the app selects 4 possible answers. One is correct, 3 wrong answers are selected from the note material of the exercise.

The game works just like the original: You have 60 seconds and the goal is to find as many correct answers as possible. But watch out! If you guess a wrong answer, you won't be able to answer again for a short time.

The app takes octave names into account. Thus, a "c" is not just a "c". It can be a C4, a C3 or a C5, etc. Only with the correct octave designation is the answer correct. So pay attention!

You can easily access the new game mode in the exercise overview. For example, tap "Easy" in the main menu and then select "Note -> Name" at the top of the screen. The records for the original game and "Note naming" are saved separately. The star rating is slightly different. In "Note naming" you don't need quite as many points to reach 3 stars. This is due to the fact that we have to constantly look back and forth between grade and answer choices. So we simply can't be as fast as on the instrument, which we can operate "blindly" to a large extent.

Have fun practicing the note names!

Bluetooth

As an addition to the already existing USB-MIDI functionality, there is now the possibility to activate "Bluetooth MIDI" in the settings. More and more electric pianos support Bluetooth MIDI. So from now on you can practice with these instruments "silent" or with headphones.