Piano Suite Premier 2.6

This is great for teaching novice kids on the computer. They enjoyed the exercises. It also keeps track of each individual student's progress. Great tool as part of a well rounded curriculum. Of course, weighted keys or a real piano is needed for adequate progress in building finger strength.

These guys have definitely put a lot of thought into this product and must be dedicated music instructers. Set up is easy. Worked perfectly out of the box. I did have one minor problem with producing sounds other then piano, but I went to the Adventus website and downloaded a patch. It works great now! Theres lots of info there and a phone number for tech support. This is great software for beginners. No big jumps in lession difficulty, just a steady progression. Lots of user interaction with the software (ie, feedback about your playing, etc), games, computer generated vide, lots of songs to play and lots of different styles from classical to rock. I'm not even using the suggested Adventus set-up, that is, using a internal soundblaster wavetable sound card. Adventus warned of a lag in hearing a note after it was pressed and when the sound was produced if you didn't have an internal wavetable soundcard. I'm not having any "latency" issues. Maybe it is because I have a 1.7ghz computer, with a external M-Audio Firewire soundcard. This is a "pro" external sound card (it has no built in sounds of its own it just processes digital sound files that come out of your computer. For access to sounds you'll need software or you can rely on the internal Microsoft GS WaveTable Software Synthesizer built into Windows XP) and Firewire is fast. For those people using the external Soundblaster Audigy cards, I've read that there may be a "latency" issue. Read the magazine reviews at the Adventus Website if you don't believe me - [...] Also, I recommend [...] for lots of info on equipment for making and recording computer music. The forums are great, especially. This is quality software.

I'm an adult learner, determined that *this* time I'm going to get past the "right hand or left hand, but not both at the same time" stage. This has been a great program for doing that. You can take it at your own pace, and repeat exercises over and over again, going back to them to refresh. You can do the exercises in either "Wait for the Note" or "Notes and Timing" modes (there's also a mode called "Rhythm" that I haven't figured out yet). "Wait for the Note" helps you learn finger placement and note location; then you move on to "Notes and Timing" when you play what you've learned to the beat of the dreaded metronome. The program gives you a score each time you play a piece and lets you know what bars you need to work on. There are also a few games to relieve some of the necessary tedium of learning the notes. I'm taking one star off for a problem mentioned by another reviewer -- the program doesn't remember your preferences. If you have a good computer screen and can use the smaller notes, you have to tell it every time. The metronome is even worse -- not only do you have to set it for every exercise, but if you push one of the other settings and then come back to the exercise, the metronome has to be reset. This is very annoying. The program is challenging, to a point. There are lots of exercises for each lesson, so you don't go bonkers playing Ode to Joy over and over again. However, the lessons stop after a very truncated section on chords. Perhaps this is because there's no way to learn chords other than to practice them, but a little more instruction and guidance would have been appreciated. On the other hand, there are many song choices in the Piano Player section that use chords, so that's good. I'd definitely recommend this software for adult learners as well as children.

I have worked with this software program and others from Adventus extensively, but am actively seeking a replacement in my studio. Installation and set-up does not work well for most of my students. Tech support is not nearly as helpful as they advertise, in fact usually they just get defensive when you tell them what isn't working. Theory Thinker lessons are boring and move much too quickly for most children. Theory games are lacking to say the least. The picture is stuck in a little square box, has not been adjusted for widescreens. There is a latency issue that costs significant $ to overcome, no matter what sound card you use. Finger numberings are given over every note of each song, and often the finger numbers are wrong. They have changed a few notes here and there in classical pieces to get around copyrights. Composer's Corner is frustrating to use. Do yourself a favor and pick some different software. Children's Music Journey from the same company is much better for young children, I have used it with many children with success: better games, sequential lessons, nice graphics, but still with installations issues, glitches here and there and even greater latency issues.

[-- SETUP PROBLEMS --] I've tried to set this program up using a midi cable and two or three different computers. It was difficult to get the software to recognize the attached keyboard, even though it is midi compatible. [-- SOFTWARE IS LAME --] There are included games which have nothing to do with music or reading music. We weren't even sure what the games were for. [-- MUSICAL GUIDANCE --] The musical guidance is the reason we bought the software and it just didn't exist. We simply wanted something that helped us progress from one note and one key to many notes in many keys and it just didn't have anything like this. It just set up the songs and had you go. [-- INCLUDED MUSIC --] The included songs aren't bad. Lots of public domain stuff so no royalties are involved for software maker.

I had taken piano lessons for a while but found the expense and getting to the lessons a problem. Having a MIDI capable electronic keyboard and a PC, I figured this software might be a good investment. I'm happy to say that this program does just what I wanted it to do; I've learned to play better and am improving all the time. Here's what the program does for me. First, it can play the music so that I know what it should sound like when correctly played. Then, I can go through a piece of music a note at a time with the program telling me visually if I have hit the right key. I get a feel for finger placement. Then, using a metronome (with a counting voice or a tone) at a pace I set, it monitors my timing and shows me exactly where I held a note too long, or not long enough. The program does exactly what a good teacher would do by requiring you to play the right notes with just the right timing. You can isolate a part of the piece you are having trouble with and concentrate just on that bar or bars. You can print out the score. Mistakes are flagged and you see, by way of red notes, where you went wrong and in what way you erred. You will watch as your accuracy climbs until you have the piece mastered. That's all good! The problems are with setup and saving settings. No two screens look alike. You wander through all kinds of icons, buttons and color schemes that have no uniformity. What is that red light up there by the picture of a piano? Hey, it's a button I can press! The graphics design folks went wild and that confuses the user. Fortunately, for practice sessions you simply have the score displayed on a white screen with a minimum of clutter. When installing, obey the request that NO OTHER PROGRAMS BE OPEN. I found that unless I install this program with NO other programs running and then immediately install the version 2.66 patch (available from Adventus online) I would get unpredictable, annoying errors right in the middle of practice. A window would pop up telling me an error had been encountered and the program would crash. The program settings can be confusing, are not all on one screen and are not saved! You may take a while to figure out why you don't hear something when you should, or you do hear something you don't want to hear. You will eventually get it right and then discover when next you run the program that nothing has been saved. So, though you have set volume levels, muted instruments, set the metronome speed, etc, before, you have to set them all again. Talk about frustrating! All that is remembered is the piece you were playing in your last session and the record of how you performed. You should be practicing music, not continually telling the program that you want the same environment you had the last time you played. This is such a basic requirement for ANY computer program that I'm amazed Piano Suite got through quality control the way it is. I've been expecting and hoping for a version 3 to appear that will be ready for prime time but version 2.6 stays with us. So, I lead a loud cheer for the pedogogical part of this program, I don't know how it could be improved. People with knowledge and experience of music were undoubtedly involved and I am living proof that Piano Suite Premier teaches piano well. But the software programmers, please, would a SAVE SETTINGS, and a single graphics-free page to make the settings, be so hard to provide?

The lessons do very well teaching a middle aged person with zero music experience how to play correctly. The software does not use ASIO driver so there are latency problems no matter what kind of sound card you have. To get around it will cost major bucks. The software is designed for young folks and the graphics can be annoying at times. The disk is copy protected and impossible to duplicate but they will sell you a duplicate for around $10. The printed sheet music is very good and if directions are followed they group formal music at levels to practice with. There are no lyrics on the printed music but are included in the software, there seems to be a lot of copyright disputes taking place.

This program accepts any size MIDI keyboard, up to a full-size 88-key one. The installation program automatically downloads any available updates from the Internet, so you should have no problem getting it installed. The requirements say Windows 95 to XP, but I have Vista 64-bit and it runs fine. Piano Suite starts off slow, has you play a song, then recommends other songs to play, based on your current skill level and/or what you need to work on. You will learn how to play many popular songs, including ones by The Beatles, Elvis, and Frank Sinatra. Many songs have multiple skill levels, so you can start playing the song at say Level 3, then work your way up to Level 5 (which has more notes and is harder to play). In my opinion, the best feature is the "MIDI Song Input", where you can download a MIDI file from the Internet or elsewhere and learn how to play it in the program. Piano Suite Premiere includes 500 songs. This program is also very customizable -- you can adjust the size of the music notes, the speed of the metronome, practice a song with left hand only, right hand only, or both hands, and select any song you want to play within the song list. You start off with the "Theory Thinker," which gradually teaches you how to play the piano with harder and harder components (triplets, arpeggios, different time signatures, etc). The program even remembers where you left off, so all you have to do is click a button to continue. Last, but not least, the program also includes games to help you become a better piano player, biographies of composers, progress reports for multiple users, and the ability to record your own songs from your MIDI keyboard.