Drills and Exercises

Drills make the building blocks automatic: a note named at a glance, a scale without thinking, a chord found by its shape. Exercises give you endless new music, so you are always reading rather than remembering. You’ll find Notes, Scales, Chords, Exercises and the Quiz together with your practice modes on Home, and in the sidebar on a computer.

Notes

Notes teaches you to read notes quickly, level by level: from middle C through both clefs, ledger lines and key signatures to sharps, flats and naturals. Every level is open. Each shows two goals: Complete for getting the notes right first time, Fluent for reading them quickly too.

Answer by playing each note, or by tapping its name (Naming), which needs no keyboard. After every run, Note by note shows each note you met, and which you missed or read slowly.

For a drill of your own, choose Open free play on the Notes page, then open Settings on the bar at the foot of the screen:

• Range sets the notes each hand is asked, up to a few ledger lines, or your own lowest and highest.
• 1 min, in the row that sets how many notes a run asks, is a sprint: as many notes as you can read in a minute, against your best.
• Sharps and flats adds notes outside the key.
• Both hands, while naming, puts each note on either stave of a grand staff.

Naming runs count towards your streak and earn XP, just like playing.

Scales

Scales has a level for every major scale round the circle of fifths from C major, each followed by its relative harmonic and melodic minor. Play a scale hands together to complete its level, and in time with the metronome on to make it fluent.

Free play lets you choose any scale in any key: major, minor, pentatonic, blues, chromatic, or an arpeggio, with fingering shown if you want it. In its settings, Copy a link to this set-up makes a link to send to a pupil or friend. All of Scales is free.

Chords

Chords takes you from C major to jazz voicings in 60 short levels, each with a short note on what it teaches (About this level). There are three ways to answer, and each level uses one:

• Score: play the chord as written. Each note goes green as you find it.
• Symbol: play a chord symbol in any position and octave. This needs a keyboard or the on-screen piano, not the microphone.
• Naming: tap the chord’s name. No keyboard needed.

In free play you choose the mode under Answer by, along with the kinds of chord, the roots and the positions. Key keeps every chord inside one key, written in its key signature, so you can learn one key at a time. Minor keys use the harmonic minor, as exams do.

Exercises

Exercises writes a new sight-reading piece every time you ask, at the grade you choose, from Initial to Grade 8. It has two tabs.

Custom is yours to set up. Open Settings to choose the grade, key, time signature and length. Every grade can be played hands together: below Grade 4 the left hand plays a simpler part under the tune. Those grades start with one hand, so choose both with the hands switch above the score.

Rated serves one fresh exercise at your level, to play once at first sight. Your rating moves with how you play it, and Pitch Only and Pitch & Rhythm each keep a rating of their own. Rated exercises don’t wait for the right note: a wrong note moves the cursor on, as it would in an exam.

Under the score:

• Save keeps an exercise you liked. It joins My Pieces, where you can play it again for stars.
• Share makes a link to that exact exercise. Whoever opens it can play it, with or without an account.

The weekly quiz

The Quiz is ten quick questions on intervals, key signatures, rhythm, notation and the piano itself, with real music to read on screen. It takes about three minutes, needs no piano, and a new one goes up every Sunday. Signed in, your scores are saved week by week. It is free for everyone.

Practising without a piano

Away from your keyboard? There is still plenty to do:

• The on-screen piano plays any piece, drill or exercise. Tap the button at the top of the screen to switch to it. Keyboards, microphone and on-screen piano explains how.
• Naming in Notes and Chords asks you to tap the name rather than play the note.
• The weekly quiz needs nothing but your eyes.
• The piece quiz on a library piece asks about the score before you play it. See the library.

The on-screen piano names its keys, so a keyboard gives a truer rating in Rated exercises.