Why I buy this one ?
- Piano and keyboard instruction software
- Five instruction modes
- Step-by-step progressive interactive lessons
- Sheet music from any imported MIDI file
- Session with MAGIX midi studio SE included

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What our customer's say!

"Bad time keeping", NB. Title and rating refer to me previously saying it had a faulty metronome - still does and now my other music software has but I cannot be sure it's down to loading this in particular. Could be anywhere between 1-5 depending on you own goals.

Just bought this, primarily because I want to learn to sight-read and also to mental score read . The ability of this to load any MIDI file cf. rely only on a fixed built in library is what drew me to it. The other reviewers one-stars are way to harsh IMO. Once a lesson (or your own MIDI file) is loaded you can do the following using your MIDI keyboard 1) tap out the rhythm on a single key -it indiates as you go along whether you were ahead or behind the correct note placement, stops and waits if you loose it altogether 2)play the pitches one by one without keeping the tempo- it tells you whether you were above or below.. especially good for familiaring key signiatures, treating accidents etc 3) combine 1 and 2 - ie. you play for real - does not seem to have a continuously variable tempo option but you can used fixed speed reduction settings for practice. You can also play either of one hand or two hand variations. All of this theoretically gives you pretty much what you need as a novice like me to begin to learn to play at the same time as building up your sight-reading skills. Get the (pretty inexpensive) SUPER SIGHT-READING SECRETS book by Howard Richman.. you can follow much of his method and this will tell you whether your doing it right or not.

What others have not indicated when mentioning lack of fingering is that it includes printable copies of the lessons which include the fingering. Using sheet music rather than playing from the screen is recommended for a major factor which may be enough to put you off this...I think you could end up developing bad reading habits as a result of reading from the screen on a regular basis. In sight reading obviously you are trying to develop the skill of reading ahead of what your actually playing. With printed music you are either scanning forward to the right, down to left as you transfer to line below or up to right as you go to a new page etc. The only time you go up-left is with a page turn but you cannot read ahead there anyway. However this setup presents only two lines of 2 measures on the screen..say for instance bars 1-4 split in two. This is not particularly good since you cannot learn to read ahead on the same line. Worse still is that rather than have 5-8 suddenly appear out of nowhere what it actually does is put 5-6 on the top line once you've done with 1-2 (ie. you have 5,6,3,4 !)-if you use this regularly you are continuously, and hence likely to develop eye-tracking habits of reading up to right every two bars!.

What I have not gone into as yet is how this actually copes with the loading of midi files eg. if you take a piano MIDI file will it actually place the music across the 2 hands in the way that it would appear in the original score. If you're real beginner however you probably get value for money out of the basic lessons before you move into this area. Beware - most of the lessons are copyright free pretty bad pastiche corruptions of well known pieces like Londonderry Air, Greensleaves etc.





"Put it down, walk away...", I had previously used Jump Software's Piano Discovery System (now out of business). But I got a new keyboard, and thought that I would get new tutor software to go with it. Well, this was on the shelf at my local electronics superstore, and it was THE MOST EXPENSIVE package. However, I could not imagine a worse package. I would like to point out that, unlike other reviewers, I had no installation problem on WinXP Pro. First of all, this is NOT for beginners. For example, the first lesson never even tells you which hands or fingers use to use. There are ABSOLUTELY NO VIDEOS anywhere. All this program does is is load MIDI files, play them back, and grade you as you play it. That is it! I would expect better from shareware. Even the text instructions do not tell you anything about how to read music, the difference between a half-note and a quarter-note, which fingers to use, etc. So this was a complete waste of $40!

For a point of reference, Piano Discovery System had recorded voices talk you through each lesson. It had videos of a person playing the music properly. It had a couple of games which were actually fun to play. Unfortunately, the company is out of business, and the software does not work on XP.

"MAGIX PIANO & KEYBOARD WORKSHOP 2ND EDITION", THE RATING FOR THIS PROGRAM IS ZERO STARS. I CALLED CUSTOMER SERVICE AND WAS PUT OFF WITH NO REPLY MY HOME PHONE IS 703 685 4935. WHEN I TRIED TO MAKE A BACKUP DISC MY COMPUTER SAID THAT THERE ARE ERRORS ON THE DISK. THE SAME RESPONSE WITH TWO DIFFERENT COMPUTERS. I WASTED TWO BLANK CDs. I WANT A PROGRAM DISK WITH NO ERRORS. MICROSOFT SAID THAT IT DOES NOT RECOGNISE ANY OF THE "E" MAIL ADDRESSES I COPIED FROM THE INSTRUCTION BOOK. THE PROGRAM HANGS UP ON WINDOWS 98. IT MAY BE DUE TO THE ERRORS ON THE DISK REPORTED WHEN TRYING TO MAKE A BACKUP. NOT BEING ABLE TO CONTACT THE MANUFACTURER IS NOT HELPFUL. THE OTHER THREE PROGRAMS I BOUGHT FROM AMAZON ARE ALL WORTH FIVE STARS BUT I REGRET HAVING BOUGHT THE MAGIX PROGRAM.

"Please Read the Fine Print!", Okay, I can't say whether version 2.0 stinks or not. I believe I may have a previous version, but can't say for sure. All I know is that my Magix Piano and Keyboard Workshop program didn't even install properly, since I use Windows XP. I checked the company's web site and there is only one vague reference to this program, and no patches available. When I bought the software, it said it is for Windows OS. Copyright is year 2001. Go figure. All I can say with certainty is to MAKE SURE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM VERSION IS SUPPORTED IN BEFORE YOU BUY THE SOFTWARE! Otherwise it is an abject waste of money. I wrote to Magix and informed them that I would post a negative review of their product until such time that they find someone in software development to create a patch for XP users. If anyone else out there has had better luck than me, more power to you!