Nota - A clever way to learn the Piano

by Milind Alvares
Tuesday December 22, 2009

Nota - A clever way to learn the Piano

by Milind Alvares on December 22, 2009

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Not all of us are gifted musically—no matter what your music teacher told you. I personally studied the Piano for two years, and I have nothing to show for it. Guitars I fared better, but the juice still wasn’t worth the squeeze. But when an iPhone app comes along, I generally pay attention. I took up Guitar again after I got to use GuitarToolkit, and have become fairly proficient with the strings. Will Nota, a piano learning tool have the same effect?

Well to start with, why the effort? Nota is a beautiful app with tasty bits of sensible UI splattered throughout the user interface. That’s no surprise, given that it comes from Melvin Rivera, the guy who as far as I’m concerned ‘invented’ the HTML signatures we so love to use. Rivera made the app after he lost the piano flashcards they used to help their kids learn music. Let’s take it to the keys. We have an upright piano, so I thought why not try to see whether it can actually teach me something. Remember, I remember absolutely nothing about playing piano.

The first screen shows you a mini piano split into four sections due to screen size constraints. At the top is a notation bar, which prints notes as you play along on the piano. Thankfully it also shows you the chord below the notes. I can’t tell you how much this would really help in comparison to having an actual teacher showing you the notes, but it’s the best the iPhone can do. Be warned, the latest update brings in a totally useless, and uncontrollable landscape view.

nota-review

The most important bit, is the quiz. I remember my piano teacher pelting out the flashcards, and this is an exact copy of that experience, if not better. You’re shown a note, and you have to quickly guess which note it is from a grid of four. Wrong notes punish you with a violent vibration of the device. Unfortunately—and the iPhone is to blame here—the other way of seeing the note, and playing it on the piano is not possible.

Nota comes with a lot, and I mean a lot, of reference material explaining things like basic chord formations, dynamics, and a bunch of stuff I have no idea what is (until I read the explanation of course). There’s a lot of things (including quizzes) meant for advanced users as well. Rivera goes ahead and adds a very fancy but still useless landscape view to this as well.

If playing the piano interested me in the least, this app would definitely be there to guide me; and it would succeed. But I’m not interested in playing the piano, so I’m hoping you will find it useful. $2.99 at the App Store, and it’s the cheapest piano lesson you’ll ever find ¹.

Disclaimer: I say this without knowing what other similar apps are available on the App Store. ↩

Tagged as: app store, iPhone, Music, Reviews

Reader Comments

just a reader December 22, 2009 at 8:10 pm: a disclaimer? really dude? Shouldn’t you do that extra journalistic thing and check to see if there are any other similar apps in the app store? I mean whats the point of reading this blog if all you do is shill for whatever app comes your way. And… if you don’t find it interesting enough to do that extra research, then don’t post.
Milind Alvares December 22, 2009 at 8:58 pm soggysh.it: Whatever app comes my way? We check out a lot more apps than we have the time to write about. Nota is a good app, does what it says, and I recommend it.

My disclaimer was only to sidestep my claim about it ‘being the cheapest’. I did give a round at the app store, but didn’t find anything interesting. However, given that I can’t judge the rest of the apps without actually using them, I added that.
just a reader December 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm: Fair point regarding “a lot more apps than we have the time to write about.”

I still feel that if you write a review, it should be based on what else is out there. For the sake of argument i did a “piano lesson” search. Took less than 15 seconds, and found several other apps at .99/ 1.99.. not hard. I’m not saying those apps are better or worst, all i’m suggesting is, take more care with posts. You are an ad supported site, so for the sake of being journalistic (which most blogger would like to consider themselves) take the extra step to show your readers what else is available. This will prevent readers from making an assumption about the reason why you reviewed this particular app. Were you paid, or was the site paid/compensated to review this app?
Milind Alvares December 22, 2009 at 11:40 pm soggysh.it: I did do the “piano lesson” search you mentioned. However, there wasn’t anything interesting enough to make the effort in checking out. However, how am I to know whether behind those screenshots lies a really useful app? You don’t expect me to have thorough knowledge of all the 95,000 apps on the App Store do you?

Why can’t the review be read for what it is? I’m introducing a new app, letting the reader know about its features, and they can purchase it if they like it. I know this app is good at what it does, so I recommend it. There’s no trickery involved; we’ve done so many of these reviews. This wasn’t a shootout or hunt for the best piano learning app on the app store, if it was I would have.

In general though I do have a better understanding of how an app stands, so a declaration like that would be based its competition. I merely expressed my lack of further knowledge on ‘piano learning apps at the app store’ by that disclaimer—which I could very well have no added—just to make sure It wasn’t misunderstood. You do have a valid point however, and I shall make sure I do a more thorough check on the rest of the apps.

Lastly, what does [the site] being ad supported have to do with this? We’re not charging anyone to read any of the content. We even distributed issues of the magazine without a signup form. To top it off you accuse me of getting paid to write this review. That just saddens me.
just a reader December 22, 2009 at 11:57 pm: “You don’t expect me to have thorough knowledge of all the 95,000 apps on the App Store do you?”
I don’t’ have that expectation, and I’m sure most of your readers don’t.
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“Why can’t the review be read for what it is?I’m introducing a new app ”
I guess this is where i expected more. A through analysis of what’s out there in comparison.
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“Lastly, what does [the site] being ad supported have to do with this” “to top it off you accuse me of getting paid to write this review.”
Being ad supported is a major issue, as it creates a clear bias. Also, I never accused you of getting paid, i merely asked. You see being paid would make a big difference on how i perceive the advice given. Also, the question i asked still remains unanswered, was the blog, you, compensated in any way for the introduction.

one last comment. i do appreciate your timely response to my comments. I’m merely here sort of picking on you because i feel like many sites now dont’ give due diligence to articles and are laced with bias based on compensation. There is nothing wrong with making money from a blog , but it should be disclosed.
Milind Alvares December 23, 2009 at 12:24 am soggysh.it: For the record, we don’t accept favours, in cash or in kind, for any of the articles we post. This one included. We’re not biased against any of our advertisers’ competitors, neither are we to them.

Thanks for your comments as well. Makes one see things differently.

One more thing I should add. My previous reply was in bad taste. Even though we provide free content, doesn’t mean we take our readers for granted.
BUD December 23, 2009 at 12:56 am: It took getting further faster teaching myself by ear to realize that there is a basic tenet of this that is probably just merely wrong for learning to read music.

How reading music probably should be taught is…
The notes are relative steps. Lines are two steps apart, spaces are two steps apart. It is the relative position of each that show you a particular chord voicing or melody line. That relative position and the timing info is the important bit.

How reading music often IS taught, and this app seems to teach is

Where does the note lie on the staves?
What letter what note does that represent?
Where is that note, a-g, on the instrument?

A TWO STEP conversion process.

Of course, you might want to know where a melody STARTS, by being able to identify that pitch, but it is the “Music Notation> Abstract Alpabetical Notation> Pitch” that I believe adds too many steps of abstraction to make the process smooth. People do not read by voicing each letter, they see words at a time. Poelpe Do Not Raed by Vioincg ecah Lteetr, tehy see Wrdos at a tmie.
Dennis December 23, 2009 at 1:46 am: Just a note to say how much I enjoy the reviews here at Smoking Apples. Although I understand how “just a reader” might want to have several apps compared and contrasted in a review, I also have sympathy for Milind Alvares’s situation: there are a lot of apps out there and not enough time to test them all. How I decide which app to buy — or movie to watch or book to read — depends on a lot of factors. Typically, I would read several reviews, ask around to see what other people are doing, perhaps download demos to see for myself (if they are available). I don’t buy a lot of apps so it’s important for me to choose the right one. In this respect, I can credit Smoking Apples for helping me choose Pixelmator; I wasn’t aware that this app existed until I saw it at Smoking Apples. But, Smoking Apples was not my only source for information: I read other reviews, dropped in on some forums to see what tools other people were using, and made the best decision I could. If I made the wrong choice, it’s all on me. I’ve been following Smoking Apples for some time now and wanted to let you know what a great job you’ve been doing.