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Comment by eddieroger | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of being the naysayer, I'm not sure it teaches you how to play the piano so much as it teaches you about musical rhythm and timing and note relativity and would help develop the ability to play by ear. It doesn't really distinguish between clefs or hand placement, and did the relative placement thing worked better when things were closer together anyway.

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I think this could be the start of something amazing. A midi keyboard seems essential but if you could progressively introduce the different elements, using both hands, pressing enough keys to correspond to chords, different hand positions I think this could be a really great way to learn. If it could give feedback on being partially correct (e.g. highlighting two parts of the chord where you need to press 4 keys) it would be learning via gentle nudges, moving onto the next lesson once you're consisting getting it a new element correct.

But rhythm and timing and note relativity are ridiculously hard to get right (especially for beginners). This is a great exercise for one of the more challenging parts of playing music well.

Plus, the audience is much more likely to notice a mistake if the rhythm is wrong than they are to notice a note is wrong. If you can get the rhythm right you can play through your other mistakes and still have a reasonable presentation.

Agreed. Not to mention the name is a little unfortunate. Say the name too quickly, and you'll probably end up in a database somewhere... :\

LOL at that last part.

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