Once upon a time I used to take  piano lessons.  Really what this meant was that every few months I would pick one from a selection of boring songs that I would then have to learn and perfect for several weeks so that I could perform it in a recital where Mrs. I forget her name could prove to my parents that progress was being made and money was being spent wisely.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy it all that much but I persisted, motivated by the prospect of one day improvizing some jazz, playing dueling pianos with my dad, or maybe even winning someone over with a love song.  None of these things ever happened, and soon enough I found “better” things to do with my time.  In hindsight, those lessons seem like mostly a waste of time; I ended up learning about as much as I learned in French (well, that’s a different story…) class – not very much at all.

So when I decided to pick up the piano again a few weeks ago I decided to do some research into what it would take for me to build my own course of study.  One of my most interesting finds so far has been “Synthesia, The Game“, a simple program that takes elements of studio software  and turns it into a learning game .  It is, in a sense, a Guitar Hero for piano, though without all the bells and whistles, or booing video people.

Guitar Hero is one of the most influential and succesful gaming franchises, and not without reason: through it kids and adults alike can fulfill their rock-and-roll fantasies.  The game has a steep learning curve and manages difficulty really well.  As evidenced by those people who are obscenely good at GH, games can be a great educational tool.  Unfortunately for the Guitar Hero prodigies, their newfound skills are not readily transferreable to, well, basically anything, as appropriately ridiculed by South Park.

On the other hand, it’s not unlikely that the Rachmaninoff of the next generation could learn the trade with something like Synthesia.  What’s most appealing about Synthesia though is not that it’ll take your playing to a whole new level, but rather that it really lowers the barriers to entry for becoming a fairly proficient player; while learning complex pieces on your own before required understanding the nuances of modern music notation, almost anyone can readily grasp the same information (note, duration, tempo, etc.) when it is presented in Synthesia’s colorful and variable-length falling bars.  This is not to say that standard music notation becomes irrelavant – on the contrary, it becomes easier to learn as you go.

This is what a song on Synthesia looks like:

Synthesia is also already spurring an ecosystem of its own, even if it isn’t doing particularly much to incite it.  There are many sample videos on Youtube and even a website, HDpiano.com, where Synthesia streams are played alongside a video of an actual player (this is potentially very helpful since Synthesia does not give fingering recommendations – yet).

Ideally the better learning environment is one that gives you on-demand feedback.  Synthesia lets you do this by linking up with your keyboard with your laptop running Synthesia. The program’s current feature set is also to be complemented with an ambitious development schedule of new features.  If your laptop screen is small, you could hook it up to a TV or monitor.   Keyboards are also great for practice because you can hook up some headphones and not disturb the peace while you butcher everyone’s favorite tunes.

Some Tangential Points

* For my business-saavy musician friends, I think there’s startup opportunities in music education that properly leverages e-learning tools. One idea would be to replace the traditional 1-on-1 learning most of us grew up with and replacing it with something like a “music gym”, where potential customers would buy a membership that would give them the right to practice any in a renge of instruments at any time during the day, under indirect supervision from experts, but mostly by going through a flexible DIY curriculum that adapts to each student’s pace and interests. The gym would provide all the necessary tools, track progress, etc.

* I was recently talking to someone I consider to be very succesful who told me that the best motivational tool they have is to think of life as a game.  I think what is meant mostly by this is a structure on which to organize very-short, short, and long-term goals.  I might give it a go myself.

* So much more to be said about the way technology is changing the way we learn. Will Hunting is more right than ever.
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