Learn a Musical Instrument Software...any BTDT?

[umsami]

So, in looking at Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, I see that Piano Wizard Academy is on sale.  I've seen some various reviews on it, but I'm not sure if it's worth it.

 

In searching on Amazon, I found some other software like eMedia's Guitar, Piano, and Violin.

 

Do any of you have any experience with any of these?  My kids would like to learn an instrument, but we can't afford private lessons right now.  

Edited November 29, 2015 by umsami

[Pen]

We have had some eMedia. It is better than nothing. But if you have an excellent teacher possible, a single lesson with an excellent real teacher perhaps could be better.  Depends on what you need / want. And what / who you have available.

[Pen]

Also, if you can get YouTube, keep in mind that it has a certain amount of music instruction there.

 

eMedia allows the computer to correct wrong notes and so on in some cases, more like a teacher would be able to do, but it can also be frustrating in my experience with their singing program. We have guitar but have not much used it. Ds asked for a casio keyboard with the eMedia package, so I guess he likes it well enough.

 

No experience with the other one you mentioned.

[Michael12]

A great deal of a music teacher's time will be spent correcting problems that were developed by the student on his own. I have seen this even after just one week. Instrument assembly, embouchure, fingering, position, posture, all kinds of things. If you get it right the first time, it's much easier. You might investigate if there are older students in the area who would be willing to instruct for less than a professional teacher.

[Aurelia]

What instrument(s) are you looking to learn? Some instruments, like the strings (violin, cello, etc) REALLY need a teacher. Others, like piano, and guitar are a little more forgiving, but it is better to have a teacher, or at least someone who knows how to play, so your kids don't pick up bad habits that take years to correct. 

 

FWIW, I've found the Learn and Master DVD series (I have only tried their piano lessons), Rocket Piano, and NYC Guitar School's online lessons to be good. I had piano lessons before I tried any of them, though, and a friend who played guitar professionally, so I can get corrections on my technique.

[umsami]

Mainly piano and guitar.  I took both..though many moons ago...along with flute and cornet (like a trumpet).  

 

[Pen]

Would there be any group classes that you kids could do more affordably than private, maybe YMCA or something? Also, might there be anything that is free or almost in your area? In our area, for example, though ds so far has not wanted to do this, there are free lessons available for fiddle playing from a non-profit group wanting to keep the old-time music tradition alive. I think computer music lessons would be better after one or a few live person lessons. The live lessons my ds has had (guitar and ukulele) had teachers who could simplify music for beginners so that after just one lesson he was already able to play several songs.  For ds, having a repertoire of several easy songs to play was more rewarding than just one or two that the computer provided before moving on to some other harder skill. That might be a personality difference though, where your kids might do better with just one or two songs at any level, which is what our eMedia seemed to give. I am not so sure though that the "bad habits" issue would be major if the kids only want to learn some for the fun of it without serious musician aspirations. Even with serious musician aspirations maybe it is not so bad. I knew a guitarist who went professional who taught himself with a very unique way of playing--which I guess started because he did not a teacher, but ended up being his special style.

[Arcadia]

Mainly piano and guitar. I took both..though many moons ago...along with flute and cornet (like a trumpet).

Do you have any of these instruments?

 

Guitar and cornet are the easiest to learn yourself just by trial and error.

 

It is a lot easier to overblow on the cornet than on the flute for higher pitch notes. The embrochure is also easier on the cornet/trumpet/horn.

 

Piano and flute is the hardest to learn yourself because of the possibility of doing it wrong and it becomes habitual.

 

My friend's son started with a casio lighted keys keyboard because she wasn't free to bring him to class. If you don't have any instruments currently and your kids want to self learn, that might work well.

 

My kids did learn to sight read the treble clef through a free ipad app ages ago. I forgot the name. They also tried the piano app on the ipad for fun. We do have a piano and my boys learn to play mainly by imitation.

 

ETA:

Suzuki book 1 works well as starters for my boys because either hubby or I can play the instrument.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Arcadia

[happypamama]

I don't have experience with any of those that you mentioned, but I will say that we have had good experiences with Synthesia for keyboard and Rocksmith for guitar. My kids have learned a ton from both of those programs. I can't do private lessons either, but at least they are learning to play instruments. Both programs use real instruments, and my kids have learned enough that they were able to play in front of our homeschool group in the spring, using their amp for the guitar, without having the computer programs in front of them.

[Dmmetler]

The Piano Maestro iPad app is really good.

[Pen]

Our new keyboard and eMedia came. ds has not used the eMedia yet, but I was surprised at how much learning was built in to the casio's own package. No lighted keyboard in this case, but a little window (which if find too small and hard to see, but seems to be okay for ds) that shows what fingers to use to play a lot of songs loaded into it. So far he has learned Twinkle Twinkle. He is pleased with himself.

[IsabelC]

As a music teacher, I don't think Piano Wizard Academy has very much to offer. It's full of dubious statements as well as material about how one can make money by promoting their method. When you look at the details, there is nothing on offer that can't be provided by a decent piano teacher, and lots of things a teacher could do that the program won't. In fact, a lot of the basic pitch/rhythm stuff can be learned just as easily by nursery rhymes, songs, chants, clapping games and dancing (you know, that stuff we all did as kids back in the days before we had computer learning).

 

A couple of examples from the website:

The truth is most children want to learn music but they think they’re not talented, or fear it’s too hard and requires too much work. Remember when you were a child, and practice was so boring, repetitive, and torturous that you finally just gave up? Sure, kids don't feel like practising 100% of the time, and there will be some repetition (which there will be with PWA as well, of course). But there are heaps of ways practice can be made more interesting, fulfilling and even fun.
What if there were a simple and engaging learning system, where children of any age could learn how to play piano in minutes, and enjoy the benefits of a lifetime of music?
What if practicing were fun and even addictive, with instant feedback and rewards, all in the form of a video game?  In fact, they don’t even know they are practicing!  Hmmm, you don't think the kid might just notice that their 'game' looks exactly like a piano keyboard?
Piano Wizard Academy is simply the most innovative music learning system available. In fact, it’s the ONLY method that teaches music by emulating the way we NATURALLY learn our native language.  Through the game’s visual, auditory, and kinesthetic feedback [Guess what happens when you play a real piano? That's right, you see your hand position and shape, you feel what kind of touch your are using and develop muscle memory, and you even hear the music you're making - wow! that's right folks - its visual, auditory and kinesthetic feedback!] , we can unleash the inner musician in anyone and prepare a whole new generation of Mozarts! OK, this would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that some parents will believe it. 
Our award winning 4-step game engine and music before theory approach empowers virtually anyone to take any piece of music and play it. Instead of struggling to learn to play piano, you’ll PLAY-to-READ-to-LEARN, almost subconsciously, learning to read music along the way too! They go on quite a bit about how revolutionary it is to play music before you learn to read music, but this is an old idea which is famously used in Suzuki method but is used in some other approaches too. They compare their program to a fictitious "traditional music teacher", for example they state that learning stops when lessons stop, whereas a good teacher is teaching the student how to learn and practice as well as how to play. Teachers of senior students are actively working towards no longer being needed by those students.
There ARE other dimensions of music, that the game does NOT teach, like timbre, attack, dynamics, and the rich musical conventions we inherited that constitute harmonic theory, but these are the muscles, the flesh, the organs of music. Pitch and Time are the skeleton, upon which all the rest hangs. This is misleading. Yes, a sense of pitch and timing is foundational, but kids should be learning the rest of it at the same time. They claim that their method is 'natural' and akin to how we learn language, but do we make kids learn to speak in a monotone and then learn emphasis and cadence of speech later? 

There is also a neat comparison of their program vs music lessons, which again is misleading because it implies that the two are somehow comparable. Apart from the fact that a music teacher has spent many years learning about her instrument(s) and learning how to teach, she will be devising and delivering a completely unique program tailored to each child. Even if she teaches all her students from the same books, she will still be responding to each one as an individual rather than implementing a cookie cutter approach. And she will be picking up any little issues before they become ingrained problems, which I'm pretty sure a game like this can't (how would it pick up whether the student's hand and arm position is correct for the material being played, for example?)

 

The fact is that there is no cheap, effortless way to turn your child into "a Mozart" in a few minutes. 

Also there is no program that is both "simple enough for a 3yo" and "equivalent to a full year college course" as they claim!

 

In your situation, I would start by doing everything possible to get the kids lessons. If I couldn't teach my kids and I couldn't pay for lessons, I'd try to find a teacher who would barter for something I was skilled in (I would happily teach your dc with that sort of arrangement if you were near us). Failing any way of getting lessons, I would choose Youtube demonstrations in conjunction with a good method book over one of these video game gimmicks.

 

If you do end up getting a program like this, you would be well advised to get the best quality keyboard you can manage (which will unfortunately negate a lot of the monetary savings). Super cheap keyboards may not be touch sensitive and usually won't have the full 88 keys (it's true that you very rarely use them all, however the most basic keyboard pictured on the website is so short that it's really only suitable for first year students). [Disclaimer: I sold my keyboard so now I own two real pianos and no keyboards. So it's more than likely that I am a Luddite in this respect LOL]

 

Edited December 3, 2015 by IsabelC

[EmilyGF]

I think private lessons are great. I encourage private lessons.

 

However, I also think traveling Europe is great and encourage others to do so, but it isn't in our financial picture to do so right now. 

 

Don't learn violin from software. No. My daughter is learning violin and just spent 6 weeks learning how to stand and hold the violin and bow properly before playing her first note.

 

However, if your goal is musical awareness and appreciation instead of amazing concert skills, by all means, learn the piano or guitar online. 

 

My dad started taking guitar lessons after my youngest sibling moved out of the house. He was 55. He likes to joke, "If you are going to take music lessons and play an instrument for 40 years, I recommend taking the lessons at the beginning of the 40 years, not the end." But he had many years of mediocre guitar playing that fit his budget and lifestyle while bringing pleasure to others. If he had decided to not teach himself the guitar, but to wait until he could have afforded lessons, we would have been deprived of lots of singing at camp outs and church. He plays much better now, but that doesn't make those other years wasted.

[Arcadia]

If your children are in any youth groups, ask around. Some youths and adults are willing to give pointers for free for guitar and ukulele.

 

Have you check with any of the non-profit music centers? Those do have financial aid for music classes. My kids group music classes weren't full, the center could easily accomodate a few complimentary students into their classes. The center has merit aid for promising musicians too.

 

If he had decided to not teach himself the guitar, but to wait until he could have afforded lessons, we would have been deprived of lots of singing at camp outs and church.

I learned how to play the guitar for free from fellow girl scouts in middle school. My girl scout pack own a few guitars for us to use in the girl scout room and for campfires/jamborees.

[EmilyGF]

If your children are in any youth groups, ask around. Some youths and adults are willing to give pointers for free for guitar and ukulele.

 

Have you check with any of the non-profit music centers? Those do have financial aid for music classes. My kids group music classes weren't full, the center could easily accomodate a few complimentary students into their classes. The center has merit aid for promising musicians too.

 

 

I learned how to play the guitar for free from fellow girl scouts in middle school. My girl scout pack own a few guitars for us to use in the girl scout room and for campfires/jamborees.

I guess I thought people were referring to professional/semiprofessional teachers. If this qualifies as a teacher music, I qualify as a teacher of music. 

 

Emily

[Arcadia]

I guess I thought people were referring to professional/semiprofessional teachers. If this qualifies as a teacher music, I qualify as a teacher of music.

 

Emily

I don't have the paper qualification to teach piano but if a friend's child need beginner lessons for free I would see if I could help.

 

Just putting more options for OP since she mentioned she couldn't afford private lessons at this point in time.

[Pen]

When I suggested music lessons if possible, or at least one or a few to start, I did have in mind an excellent professional teacher.

 

However, and particularly for folk or bluegrass or jazz type instruments and music, and maybe even rock and roll type too as well as probably hip-hop and many other forms, learning from others in the community seems to me like it would actually be the "correct" traditional way to learn to play, and to me, if available, would be as good or better than a "professional teacher."

 

Private music lessons from a professional teacher seems to be the norm for classical style piano, violin, and so on. But I don't think it is the norm for most of the world's music over most of history.