Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to common questions about hardware compatibility, browser requirements, sheet music formats, and practice analysis in Better Piano Practice.
Requirements
Do I need a MIDI keyboard?
Yes, if you want to capture practice sessions - which is the main point of BPP. If you're reviewing your own practice or that of others, a MIDI keyboard is not required.
What about acoustic pianos?
Some acoustic pianos have MIDI support, but most do not. Some hybrid acoustic pianos do have electronic sensors and support MIDI. There are conversion kits that add sensors and MIDI support to acoustic pianos, but these are not common, and are quite expensive. Finally, there are audio/microphone-based solutions, but it's not clear if they are sufficiently accurate.
Can I use BPP on a tablet?
See Setup - Devices and Setup - Platforms for more details. For recording practice, Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers on Android tablets should work but aren't optimized; iPad is not supported. Reviewing practice should work, but hasn't been optimized for smaller screens.
Audio
Why record the audio?
See the audio section in Setup - Devices; audio isn't strictly required, but it turns your practice session into something you and others can review at any time, exactly as it sounded when you were practicing.
Also, if you practice a piece several hundred times, and finally play it truly beautifully, wouldn't you want a recording to be proud of? (Hasn't happened after many hundreds of playthroughs in my own practice, but you probably play better than I do!)
I only hear noise and no audio in my practice recordings
This is usually caused by selecting the wrong audio input device - typically a microphone - instead of an audio input that picks up your digital piano. Setup - Devices covers this in more detail, but in short, you'll need a new digital piano that supports capture with the right drivers installed, or for older digital pianos you'll need an audio interface.
Can I play practice back through my digital piano?
Yes. This is the default for sessions without audio, where only the MIDI notes are captured. You'll need to ensure that your digital piano is connected, turned on, and that it is selected in the Audio Output menu (speaker icon in the top bar while in the playback view), in the "For sessions without audio..." section.
If you wish to force sessions with audio to play MIDI notes through your digital piano, the "Force MIDI output even if audio is available" toggle will always use MIDI playback (or software synthesis) instead of the recored audio track. This can be useful if you accidentally used the wrong audio input device.
How can I avoid swapping my headphones between my computer and digital piano?
An audio interface is great for this; it mixes the output of your computer and that of your digital piano, so you can use one pair of headphones, or external speakers, across both devices without swapping. Even if you have a newer digial piano with digital capture support, this setup may be preferable, especially if using a computer that's always connected to the piano.
How can I make my digital piano sound better?
This has nothing to do with BPP, and is just personal opinion - but use good headphones or speakers. Even entry-level digital pianos sound great, and have for a decade. However, they often come bundled with a $10 pair of headphones that look OK, but do a poor job of revealing the potential of your digital piano. If you can borrow a good pair of headphones to try out the difference it makes, you might be surprised what your existing keyboard is capable of. Similarly, the built-in speakers on most digital pianos are very limited - though it's more involved (and expensive) to connect good external speakers.
Artificial Intelligence
Does BPP use AI on my data?
No - with one notable exception. The fingering prediction feature uses an open source AI model from Google (MediaPipe) in order to predict the location of your fingertips from your camera image. A non-AI algorithm then combines this with extracted geometry of your keyboard, and MIDI note timing, to predict which finger pressed a given key. This AI model runs locally on your computer, only generates fingering predictions, and doesn't store or train on any of your data.
Other functions, including the analysis of what you're playing, and the insights generated from past sessions, use traditional algorithms. Not due to an opposition to AI - if an AI/ML-based model did a better job of understanding your practice, it would be worth considering. However, BPP is free, and running complex AI models on practice sessions that can contain tens of thousands of notes each (tokens, in the AI world) would be very expensive!
Was BPP created with AI?
Yes! We used AI tools as much as possible to help with writing code; this would have been a much longer project (or a smaller one) without the advent of these tools.
That said, many of the tricker parts - audio/MIDI/video synchronization, the analysis and matching of scales, arpeggios, pieces, and the algorithm work behind fingering prediction was still created by hand (sometimes with AI helping translate the design details into code). Again, not due to a dislike of AI, but because it wasn't good enough at these parts of the system - yet. I also have technical depth in those areas from my professional work, unlike front-end UI where AI tools were used quite extensively.
Finally, this and all other documentation is also written by hand. So if anything is wrong, or sounds dumb, that's sadly my doing.
Free, Really?
Do I have to pay to use Better Piano Practice?
No.
But are there ads?
No. Ads seem like they'd be pretty distracting when you're trying to practice the piano.
Do you sell my data to third parties then?
No. We only keep your email adddress (which isn't shared with anyone), and your practice data - but that practice data is owned by you, not us (as explained in our terms of service), so we couldn't sell your awesome performances to a music label or anything like that, even if we wanted to.
So how do you make money then?
We don't. This is a passion project, albeit a fairly large and ambitious one. Financially, the goal is simply to not lose too much money on hosting, storage, etc. If that becomes an issue we'll provide plenty of notice before changing anything.
What if I want to support the project?
The goal of the project is simply to create something useful that helps with piano learning. You can help make it more useful with suggestions and bug reports, and by sharing it with others who also find it useful!