Note Trainer Pro

If you’re familiar with the piano and sheet music but it’s been a long time since you played and you want to re-familiarize yourself, this is the app for you. I’m retired and hadn’t played since high school so I was more than a little rusty. I found the app is a great way to re-associate my sheet music reading, muscle memory, and left/right hand coordination. It’s not a piano music teacher but if you know your 7 and 5’s and have some experience this could be right for you.

I really prefer to play by ear as it is better suited for campfire jams and the like so I have not spent much time trying to read music. However, sometimes there are tunes that are difficult to pick up by ear so I occasionally, and painfully try to read the sheet music. I usually just try to listen and read enough until I memorise the tune. Although I still choose memory and playing by ear, over the past month or so I have gotten quite a bit better at reading music as a result of this app. I like this software because I can learn while I am not playing an instrument (on a plane, bus, etc). Also, I can choose modes with all sorts of sharps or flats that I do not regularly play which helps me absorb reading in keys I rarely play. This app was money well spent, as is the "Ear Trainer" app made by the same company.

I would have given Note Trainer 5 stars except for one issue. That issue is that in order to use the advertised MIDI interface, you have to separately buy a Lightening to USB camera adapter which costs $29. I did not know this until the developer explained it to me when I asked him why it wasn't working. He said that he would add the notice of the need of the adapter in future advertisements of the Note Trainer product. Now that I have the adapter, the application works nicely as advertised. There are no bugs in it that I have noticed. It really does help me learn to sight read music more quickly, and in a fun way. It performs well on both my iPad and iPhone.