This wonderful application not only can teach raw beginners how to play the piano, but if you follow the courses through to the end, you can learn how to play and record your own music.

Initially, the setup will show you how to select options for the use of the MIDI drivers on the computer, it also sets the metronome, notes, sound source and lead-in options. In addition, it has a keyboard setup that sets the range of notes of the MIDI keyboard. This is a piano teaching system that uses a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) keyboard that is part of the application, plus your computer. It teaches beginners how to play, anyone who wants to learn can do so with a minimum of effort, but requires patience and practice. It tells you when you are doing something correctly, and if not, it gently tells you to try again before going forward to the next lesson.

Play Piano teaches in accordance with the ability level and learning speed of the student. Bottom line is that whether you are just beginning to learn or you want to brush up on some skills, this application will adapt its lesson to you with the appropriate exercises. For instance, if tricky fingering trips you up, then you will get a chance to play at your own pace so that you can concentrate on the fingering and then build up to the correct tempo. One of the great advantages with this system is that it has a representation of hands placed on a keyboard and those hands move along with the song, and can show you, as many times as required, how a piece should be played.

In addition, the Play Piano integrates music theory lessons with individual songs to help the student better learn and understand the song being played, and help build a more solid music foundation. Importantly, any one of the 400 music theory lessons can be taken independently of song lessons. A quiz follows each music theory lesson reinforcing the concepts just learned. They also have included progress reports that allow you to monitor your own progress on individual songs, showing the amount of time spent learning each section in the song and the difficulty level for each section.

Obviously, one has to practice a song, or parts of a song until you can get it to sound the way it was meant to sound. Practicing is the key to truly learning any song, and Play Piano software allows you to take lessons and practice at your own pace and schedule. The application allows you to practice each hand individually, set the tempo of the practice session and select an accompaniment, if desired. A metronome helps you to learn the proper tempo at which each song should be played. During a lesson, the software will adjust the tempo when you are having problems learning a particular section, or you can adjust the tempo as needed.

Another great feature of the application is that one or more people can take lessons and choose their own pace, so that if one person is a beginner, and another has much more experience but wants to learn more about theory or tempo, you can do so.

One of the most impressive features in the application is Midisoft’s ability to import standard MIDI files that can then be learned. This is a very complex process and there are several caveats that one must be aware of, but they have made them easy to understand.

There is a tremendous amount of help built in to this application, which, mercifully, is absolutely understandable in layman language. Procedures to do any of a few dozen ‘how to’ are short, to the point, and understandable, without having absolute knowledge of the application or your computer. They include a Tips and Tricks portion where they explain what and why to change things in Preferences, etc. in order to improve the system performance. In other words, Play Piano has made learning how to play as simple as possible without intervention in the form of a human teacher.

Once you have become proficient in Play Piano, you are ready to try the Midisoft Studio, which is a great part of the application. With Midisoft Studio you can create your own songs, and then you can open various views to aid in editing your compositions. You can record on multiple tracts and customize your recording environment. Midisoft Studio uses their own wave editor, which is a complete, professional waveform editing utility that provides over fifty functions and options that allow you to fine tune the .wav files. It has three main components: a session area, tool bars, and a menu bar so that you can edit, mix or compose custom wave files. There are entire and separate procedures to enable the user to work with music files, song lists, music scores, and many more. For instance, if you are working with music scores, Midisoft will lead you through changing instruments or sound characteristics, transposing, which lets you change a file by notes, keys or even octaves. You can change the Key or Time Signatures, or Tempo. You can add or change lyrics, change the Clef and have a multitude of additional choices.

In their Playing Song area, they describe how you can actually view the track playing in a score view or a mixer view and a piano roll view. They have controls for playing, stopping, rewinding or fast forwarding so that you can hear a specific area many times, if desired. Likewise, in their recording a song area they are very specific describing how to record, overdub a song or step record. The step record feature allows you to record songs one note at a time which gives the user exact and precise control over each note.

Their Wave Editor procedures include direction in using the wave editor, opening .wav files, recording the .wav file and setting .wav options. The Editing Waveforms, includes direction on marking a waveform, changing it and calculating the size of the wave file.

I believe that you can tell from this short description of the application how intense it is and how packed it is with information that will make it delightful to not only learn to play the piano, but to then record your own creation. It is my feeling that those who have been blessed and are musically inclined will enjoy using the application to the fullest, and those of us who think they are not disposed towards learning the piano will find that they have a talent within themselves that they didn’t know existed.

Midisoft has made it easy.