Simply Piano Is the Best Music App I Have Ever Used - Simply Piano 2022 Review
11Simply Piano Is the Best Music App I Have Ever Used - Simply Piano 2022 Review
Script:
Simply Piano is one of the best musical apps I have used in terms of learning the instrument it is teaching. Sure it's got a major problem that I'll talk about in the end, but I don't think I have ever used such an addicting and fun music-learning app. It may even surpass Rocksmith 2014 as my favorite of all time! Haven't played Rocksmith Plus yet, so my favorite may be topped soon.
[Intro]
Simply Piano is a mobile app created by Simply, formally known as JoyTunes. The company focus on teaching musical instruments and concepts through technology. They have apps for singing and guitar, which I will cover later. However, their main claim to fame is Simply Piano. Simply Piano listens to the notes you play on either a physical piano or the touchpad piano and gives you real-time feedback on the notes. The app features many songs and lessons to teach you how to play the piano. The whole suite of apps is available for one hundred and fifty dollars per year or ninety dollars for six months. That compares to Yousician, a hundred and eight dollars per year. Still, that app teaches more instruments, such as Ukulele or Bass. I will state right now that I think the price is pretty fair for the content you are getting. It's not an amazing deal since I will outline a few negatives later. Still, I'll say it's decent if you consider picking it up.
As I said before, the app works by utilizing your device microphone and then matching that pitch to the app note recognition software. If you are using a real-physical piano, that means it needs to be in tune. To simplify, I recommend using a keyboard and setting it on the grand piano mode. I use this Casio Casiotone Keyboard for a hundred and fifty bucks. The app recognized the Piano with absolutely no issues. If you want to play a keyboard with no sound, so you don't disrupt the neighbors or sleeping baby, then you can use a chord to hook up your phone port to a USB adapter and then plug in the USB Chord to your keyboard. The app explicitly recommends this method once you get to the more advanced courses, which I am nowhere near good enough to get into. I didn't try this method, but I wanted to state so in case anybody needs it.
Let's get into the application layout itself. You start off by completing this survey on the website or your phone. You list what you want to achieve, how long you have played, and what type of music you want to play. From there, the app will generate a group of courses you need to play to improve your piano skill. Each course has a ton of subjects, with each subject having anywhere from two to eight lessons. I have played for around eighteen hours across my sixty days and made it to Intermediate I. I started from the basic chords section as my only experience with the piano is from my sixty days of Yousician Piano Review. My version of Basics to Intermediate 1 is probably a fourth of the courses listed in that tab. They also add new ones, so there is just a ton of content to play through… probably at least a hundred hours from my starting point.
I recommend you all pause this video and watch my review of Yousician Piano, as I will further reference the two apps. I want to highlight why I recommend this one over Yousician, so you need a base to compare. Alright, Good. Welcome Back. Simply Piano absolutely destroys Yousician in the Courses/lessons compartment. There is not only way more courses but the lessons are a little better planned out as well. It changes based on what you pick, but the general outline is that each course will go into lessons on learning a specific technique. Then you will get a song in the style you chose in the survey to complete, then you have to get a certain number of stars based on a section of songs chosen for you. Each song can give you one to three stars based on how well you play the songs. For example, my intermediate 1 course had a video lesson on different rhythms before the next lesson had me play the different rhythms. Next, I practiced what I learned in a lesson that separated Katy Perry's fireworks into different parts. The next lesson had me play the whole song as a single piece. Lastly, I had four songs to choose from to get six stars.
The four songs utilize the rhymic pattern I learned in the previous lessons and are used in Katy Perries Fireworks. You repeat that til the course is done, and you move on to the next one, where the pattern repeats itself. It sounds boring when I say it like this, but I absolutely loved it. It made me feel that I was building my skills and compounding them into full songs. Compare that to Yousician, which doesn't have a six-lesson breakdown per song… you play the song itself. While it can get repetitive, and You can't skip a lesson as you can in Yousician, it's still a good time. It forces you to practice a piece of music repeatedly.
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