Simply Piano by JoyTunes is an amazing piano learning app!

Around the same I ordered two piano method books (that I talked about the last two posts), I discovered the iOS app Simply Piano (by a company called JoyTunes).

Tried the free lessons first. Introduced, middle C, D, E, where they are on the staff, intro on fingering, then some exercises using only those notes.

What's different about their method (compared to PlaygroundSessions) though, is that fingerings are only present in the first few notes, while the rest of the exercise just contains the notes (on the staff) themselves. So what happens is, you will actually be focussing on the notes, instead of the fingering.

Then F was added. Few exercises. Then G was added, and a few more exercises again.

Then in the final exercise (of the free chapter), I was given just a sheet music to play. No note names on it, no fingering, no accompaniment. My first thought was, "but I can't read sheet music yet!", but then quickly realized that the previous half hour or so of exercises has all been in preparation for this.

And true enough, I performed what's in the sheet music after just a few tries.

This app, their teaching approach, it's amazing!

And the focus on sight reading - this is what's missing from PlaygroundSessions.

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Simply Piano is the second piano-learning app that JoyTunes made after their first hit app PianoMaestro.

I already stumbled upon PianoMaestro in my search for software-based-piano-learning apps before. I think the reason I never got to try it was, I searched for it on the iOS App Store using my iPhone, but didn't get any hits. So I assumed that the project must have ended already.

Turns out PianoMaestro is only designed for the iPad - which is why I didn't get any hits using an iPhone.

Simply Piano on the other hand is a universal app, which runs both on an iPhone and an iPad.

Had I discovered Simply Piano first, then I most likely would have gone with it. Most likely - because without the one-month experience using PlaygroundSessions; plus a few days of using and following the Piano Lessons section of GarageBand; plus a few sessions of using Skoove.com - then I most likely wouldn't even realize how much better Simply Piano is compared to the competition.