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About Better Piano Practice

Better Piano Practice (BPP) is a system to help you get more out of your piano practice. It doesn't replace your learning method or your teacher if you have one; rather, it complements those things by recording your practice sessions, capturing both notes and audio so you have a complete picture of how you played, and provides insight based on your practice sessions into how you're spending your practice time, the progress that you're making, and how you can improve.

BPP is not a commercial service. As an older adult learner, who often couldn't tell if I was making any progress, I built this to get the most of out my practice time - and to see if I could use the skills I had (software development) to compensate for the musical skills I was clearly lacking. I've put a lot effort into it in the hopes that it can help others, but it's very much a work in progress that I'd welcome your feedback on.

Key Concepts

There's a few key things to understand about BPP, to help you decide if it's right for you.

  1. Requires a digital (MIDI) keyboard: BPP needs accurate information about each note that you play, which comes from a MIDI connection to your digital piano (typically over USB or Bluetooth). It doesn't work with acoustic pianos (unless you've added MIDI support, which is rare).
  2. Doesn't change how you practice: The core idea is that you keep practicing as you have been - you'll just get more information and insight about that practice. You don't need to look at the screen while you play, choose drills or identify what piece you're going to play, or do anything different other than starting a session.
  3. Runs entirely in a web browser: There's nothing to install; BPP just needs permission to use your MIDI and (optionally) audio/video devices, and you're good to go.
  4. Cloud-based, but data is yours: Your practice history, reports, goals, etc, are stored on a server in the cloud - but the data is yours. You can download the MIDI and audio for any session, and the data is accessible only to you unless you choose to share it.
  5. Bring your own music: BPP has a collection of public-domain classical pieces that you can add to your library, or you can upload your own music (in MusicXML or MIDI format). You can play anything you want in practice sessions even without music - but you'll get a lot more automatic insight if BPP knows what you're trying to play.
  6. No built-in lessons: If you're looking for something to guide you through learning piano for the first time, BPP isn't designed for that. There's lots of great services out there that focus on this and integrate with your digital keyboard to give you step by step guidance, from people who - unlike me - can actually play the piano well.

Getting Started

Getting started with BPP is pretty easy - but getting the most out of it does take some effort, both in capturing your practice sessions, and in setup so it knows your music and is set up correctly for your hardware and devices.

  1. Create an account: You can create one with any E-mail address, using a Google account instead is recommended.
  2. Set up your keyboard and audio: Connecting a MIDI keyboard and granting permissions is sufficient; ideally you'll also capture audio, or even use your camera to track fingering if your setup allows. There are trade-offs, so reading this page is recommended.
  3. Add your music: Adding the music you intend to play allows BPP to detect when you're playing it, and analyze that play to give you information on how you're playing that piece.
  4. Record your practice sessions: BPP runs in the background while you practice; just start a session when you practice (or leave it running with auto-start).
  5. Review how you did: Listening to your own practice can be revealing; you can also see what potential issues BPP detected in your play.
  6. Set goals: You can set one-time, daily, or weekly goals to keep yourself motivated. They're tracked automatically. If you designate a teacher, they can see your progress and/or assign goals to you.
  7. Gain insight: Once you've accumulated multiple practice sessions, you can look at trends in how you're spending practice time, see your progress on pieces and drills, look at where you might consistently be making a mistake, etc.

Piano Teachers

I'm hopeful that BPP can be helpful to piano teachers, by providing full visibiliy into exactly how your students are practicing, since most practice happens between lessons (in theory; my kids seemed to miss the memo on this one). For me, it always felt like live instruction time was better spent on challenges I was having, rather than my teacher verifying what I'd practiced.

I think that high-fidelity capture can support teachers who work with students remotely, without the limitations of trying to aim a camera towards a piano keyboard, or relying on a low-quality built in microphone over a videoconference. Since session can be annotated with comments (both student and teacher), I hope that even opens the door for asynchronous review and feedback.

That said, I'm no piano teacher - so I would love feedback to make BPP more helpful for what teachers actually need.