Minor pentatonic lesson - Keyboard
K
Kyle
Hello,
Thank you for your hard work! I’ve never learnt piano so fast. This is the best resource i’ve seen! I’ve nearly finished all the piano content in a few days and would love to pay to continue. The minor pentatonic lesson doesn’t seem to allow practicing. Is it possible to fix this and to add another scale to learn?
Other future ideas for the piano lessons could be:
- Chord progressions
- Circle of fifths
- Arpeggios
- Diminished/augmented chords
- Suspended chords
- Seventh chords
I guess filling out other scales might be easier to implement.
Thanks again!
Udit
Hey Kyle, sorry I never saw your reply. Finally picking things back now.
- Just fixed the minor pentatonic bug. Check it out.
- If you dont mind a smaller MIDI keyboard, you could try using a Bluetooth keyboard. Also, all the new MIDI keyboards have USB.
- Yeah, the audio recognition is not perfect. I get annoyed with it too.
- Dim/aug/sus/7th: So the 7th chords are already there but I'll see what I can do about the dim/aug/sus
- Thank you for all the ideas, this is great food for thought. I'll chew on these in my head for a while to see what can come of it.
Thanks a bunch!
Udit
Also, yes, sight reading is also on the agenda! Lots to do, so little time!
Udit
Hey Kyle, thank you for the amazing feedback.
- It's kindof funny to receive feedback on the piano courses and games because it's basically all unreleased material. I never sent out any emails or posted anywhere announcing the new feature because a) I never finished it , b) I felt like it wasn't enough content to justify charging for it just yet and c) bugs crept in while I worked on other stuff. I just kept it as a not-so-hidden feature that I built for myself. So its nice to see it being used.
- > I’ve nearly finished all the piano content in a few days
This is hilarious. I mean, i absolutely love that you finished all the content in a few days but dammit it took me 4 months to build it and it's still buggy 😂. Oh well, at least I'm glad people are using it. This is partly what I meant above by not enough content to justify charging just yet.
- Before I forget, can I ask you what you like the most? Are you using more courses or the games or both? Are the shape visualizations helpful? like the "/\__" etc. Do you use the audio live mode or the midi connection to play the games or do you just play it by tapping/clicking? I'm asking because I built those things based on how I learn and I'm not sure if other people's brains are wired similar to mine. Also, are you a guitarist who just happened to check out the piano feature or did someone somewhere link to this as a piano resource?
- Now coming to your suggestions:
a. Circle of Fifths is already built but is waiting to be released as a whole theory section that I've been working on. Expect it before the end of the year.
b. Chord Progressions is also in progress. This is more theory focused than piano though. Not sure how it would work with piano. Happy to hear suggestions
c. Arpeggios. Tell me more. I see arpeggios as more of a finger dexterity thing than a pattern recognition thing. Wouldnt an arpeggio game basically ask you to repeat the chord's notes in 2 octaves?
d. For the dim/aug/sus and seventh chords, would you want courses or just games would do? In general courses take a long time to make while games tend to be faster.
e. The minor pentatonic not allowing you to practice is a bug. I'll take a look at it once I'm back to work. I'm actually off work for a couple weeks in the process of moving apartments so I might not get to it till mid October.
Take care and thanks for writing.
K
Kyle
Lol, my brother plays guitar, was using your site, and found that there was an option to practice piano, so he sent it to me. It’s very high quality and beautifully made, so the hard work coding is totally paying off!
I’ve been using the on-screen keys, but I might have to get a MIDI cable. I tried the live audio, and it mostly works, but sometimes I have to play a note multiple times for it to register. I’m using the courses and games, but more than anything, the lesson practice—filtering scales/chords to untangle which shape belongs to which scale/chord if I keep mixing them up.
I found that the shapes like /\__ are essential to mentally picture just before hitting the correct keys.
a. Circle of Fifths: Awesome. Excited to see it!
b. Chord Progressions: I imagine getting a key and a progressions such as “C: I-vi-ii-V” and then having to play these in order perfectly. Setting filters could be
- Chord Quality: Dim, Aug, Sus, 7th
- Scale: Major, minor, blues, etc.
- Keys: C, D, E flat, etc.
• Maybe users can introduce their own progression combos to practice, so that there’s not a finite hard-coded set of them.
• Bonus points can be given if you find a chord inversion that has some of the same notes as the previous chord (to train minimal hand movement).
c. Arpeggios: I agree that this would be dexterity, speed and smoothness. It could just ask to arpeggiate ascending or descending a chord with a metronome, and it has to be as close on the beat as possible? I’m not sure, but it’s not too much of a priority tbh.
d. Dim/aug/sus/7th: Game for these imo! Even if there’s no handy shape to memorize, it could be just be easier after having learned normal major/minor chords.
e. Minor Pentatonic bug: That’s okay. There’s no rush. Thank you!
f. Also, if you ever make a game for sight reading note recognition—not a priority for me—you could have a grand staff above with a note and on-screen keys below. The user has to click on one of the keys presented (one octave) to note correctly if it’s A, C#, etc. Filter could be:
- Note range with two sliders: one for how high up the top note will be and one for the bottom note.
• If using a MIDI connection, there could be an option to capture the exact note in the right octave or to turn this off to only focus on the note letter itself in one octave.
What do you think? I’m very much a beginner, so take everything with a grain of salt lmao. Good luck with the apartment move!