Leave a Review flowkey
honest to god life affirming !!!!!
i never leave reviews so i really mean this. i’m 23 and grew up playing piano and adoring it with a burning passion but had overall negative experiences in lessons because i played by ear and had a difficult time comprehending written music. i never progressed beyond a level 3 or whatever until i was 20-21, although i never went longer than a week without working in an hour at the piano even in the hardest times.
the format of this app is EXACTLY what i needed to bridge the gap between my written music comprehension issues and my natural ear. the music selection is legit, and the instructional videos are ASMR if nothing else. it’s a little steep, but if you’re wanting to really throw yourself into learning piano and you’ve been at a standstill and are willing to throw some cash at it, i would absolutely recommend this app.Show lessSkiffs Jdjjsjd
Developer Response
Thanks so much for your comments! It's really inspiring for us to read stories like yours. Though I'm sorry that your experiences in lessons weren't too positive. It's so wonderful that you found your perfect learning method in our app. And yes, we also realized that the learning curve in the courses is a bit steep. That's why we're currently working on improving this - and we also plan to add more courses (and songs!) in the future as well. So I hope you'll keep having a great time learning with us!Great alternative for self learner pianist wannabe
My son private piano lesson close down their physical location activities due to pandemic. In the meantime, we are trying to find alternative so he can continue learning and improve his piano skill. There are few products available for self learning but we pick flowkey. The software feature collection of songs from different genres and levels, various self learning tools such as wait mode, speed adjustment, rollback/repetition, and live recording action of the actual person playing on the piano. He was able to master 2 songs so far at the pro level within less than 2 months and his level at private lesson was just the beginner. All it takes is steady and persistent learning. His side reading skills definitely improved vastly. This software isn't perfect. Wait mode sometime skipped and there was no way to print out the sheet perhaps due to copyright issue. Price wise seems to be expensive @$120 yearly but if you think of how much you're paying for private tutor, this is actually cheap. I dare you to try.Show lessc@ts74
Developer Response
Thanks a lot for your thorough feedback. It's great to hear that our app helps your son to keep practicing in these difficult times. And sounds like he is really making great progress. That's awesome! And yes, advanced pieces can sometimes be a challenge for the note detection via microphone. So in case you have a digital piano, I'd highly recommend to use a MIDI connection. With MIDI, the note detection is 100% precise - even in pro pieces. However, we're also working on improving the note detection via microphone. If you'd like help with setting up MIDI, please email our support team support@flowkey.com They'll be happy to help! Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to share your and your son's experience. Stay safe!Great app BUT...
Got a three month subscription with my piano. Using piano marvel to tackle some classical pieces, but this has a nice feature of showing the hand placement if I get stuck. I don’t want to rely on watching hand placement or I’ll never get good at sight reading, but the looping, separate hands and different speeds are great. They also have a wide variety of pieces of a range of difficulty. Biggest note on this app is there is a huge piece of unused black space above the hand position video. Would be nice to be able to slide hand position video and sheet music up to reveal more sheet music and remove unused black space. Seems like an obvious issue to improve. I end up having piano marvel and this app open and switch back and forth. Maybe wouldn’t do that if the empty black space issue was resolved and more sheet music took up more real estate on the iPad screen.Show lessalecjstory
Definitely get a MIDI cable
Just getting back into piano after a 20 year hiatus and this app has been a nice way to find a decent variety of songs to get back to it.
Songs range from classical to pop to romantic and the same song usually comes in multiple levels, letting you get a taste for a song, master one level to feel accomplished, and then start practicing against the next level.
The cloud syncing of your songs and preferences is great as you can change between devices and your songs follow you.
The wait for me feature is awesome, especially when you have a section that is particularly tricky. As others have noted, the microphone note detection is sketchy, so do yourself a favour and get a MIDI cable if possible.
Feedback to the developer:
* I wish you would group the same song’s various levels together
* there seems to be a huge gap between intermediate and advanced. See Happy Birthday as an example of the leap between the two.
* the ability to add to/remove from favourites on all views of a song would be a huge boon
* minor nit: the indicator between beginner and intermediate is really hard to differentiate if you’re colour blindShow lessfreakyfelt
Could be so much better
I love this app and hate it at the same time. What I love about it are the selection of songs and some of the basic learning tools. I also love being able to see the fingering as the song is played in the upper half of the UI. Here's what I hate: I hate the fact that you cannot ever see more than four measures at a time. (At least on my 10.5 iPad Pro). I also hate that if you pause to look at the notes, you get the overlay which makes the notes hard to see. I want to be able to see more measures or at least give me a page view of the music. The UI is also inconsistently presented. On some songs, there are fingering numbers, and on other songs they are not there at all. Also, there are only two speeds - super slow or super fast with nothing in between. This app has HUGE potential, but because of its shortcomings, I most likely will not re-up my subscription.Show lessFinal Cut Guru
Terrible Midi Function
Really excited about the app but the midi function is awful on the iPad as there is no option for midi sound like on a Mac. It was recognizing my playing through my speaker until all of a sudden it didn’t want to recognize my A note. I switched different sounds and it was all the same. Then I wanted to try the midi function. Works perfectly fine when I use GarageBand and sound comes out great so I know it’s not on my end but when I try and get sound out of flowkey nothing comes out. I read online that you midi controller requires an audio out but that’s kind of ridiculous since many midi controllers don’t have that option (I own 4 from various companies and price points) Please fix this or I may need to switch apps.Show lessanaischants
Already the best, could be better.
I LOVE this app. They have the best pop songs (very important to me) and they keep the app updated regularly. I tried many piano learning apps but this one was the best. The UI is great. I like being able to loop any section I want, scroll back and fourth, and use a midi keyboard if I want. I keep buying the yearly subscription and it is totally worth it. One improvement I would love to see is an option to remove or add the hands from/to the view (while learning a song) if you would like. I actually put a piece of paper over the hands part of the screen when I’m trying to learn how to read the sheet music, because my brain wants me to just peek at the hands because they’re easier to read. This option would help us learn how to read sheet music. Then we could add the hands back to the view whenever they were desired.Show lessNickname4567574765
Developer Response
Hi there! Thanks so much for your positive feedback! I'm happy to hear that our learning features help you to learn they songs efficiently on your own. And yes, we do our best to grow our song library each month. I will also forward your suggestion to hide the video to our product team. I can definitely see that this would be helpful - especially when you really want to focus on reading sheet music. And we're always open for suggestions to improve the learning experience for our users. :)Love my csp-170 and flowkey nice addition.
I bought a Yamaha CSP-170 one year ago. Started using flow key with free into offer. I have upgraded to premium last year after free intro and agin for another year. While the app is pretty expensive I have been using it every day. It does work very well with my piano and my playing has really improved over the past year. Now with virus stay at home, I will be using it even more. I suggest trying it and seeing how you like it then if you do upgrade to premium.
Sometime I just like to play songs on my iPad and watch how they are played. It had enabled mr to play harder songs that I could have without the app. I love love the live wait mode aspect. I noticed some one else not liking it. It works very well on my Yamaha CSP-170 plugged in thru USB port. I my Yamaha per-125 on a camping trip in my motor home. That didn’t work as well because it is too old to plug in thru usb. Have to use microphone function to “hear” the mores I played. It will miss hear some notes and slow down my playing but plugged it works very well.Show lessFourteener29
Developer Response
Thanks a lot for your comments. It's wonderful to hear that you've been learning with us for quite a while already. Sounds like you really learned a lot with us - and I'm sure, your song repertoire will increase even more. Seems like you are very dedicated when you even practice while you are camping! And yes, the MIDI connection via cable (or even Bluetooth MIDI) is what we recommend in Wait Mode. It just works best. Happy practicing! And stay safe!Learn at your own pace, plus the fact that you can jump around to where you feel comfortable but...
I like the fact that you can learn at your own pace and that unlike with music lessons you have to practice a certain amount of time everyday and I didn’t like that idea so learning at your own pace works for me. The only problem is the note detection from playing on the piano and the iPad hearing it from the mic. It seems to glitch every once in a while when i play two notes at a time i have to play them a couple of times in a row to get it to hear me playing. And at one point today when I was playing I played two notes and then the screen didn’t move on to the next section and I tried closing out the app and it was still happening. And I know it isn’t my iPad that is the problem because I just got this back in December and it is the bran new 2019 version.Show lesssophiebeanzee
Love it!
Love this freaking app! I’m kind of addicted to it. We got a Yamaha piano p-45 for Christmas for our family, and it came with three free months of flowkey. I’ve been doing courses and songs every day. What a great combo. I quit piano lessons after a year in fifth grade. Never made it to two hands, and flowkey had me playing with two hands in a few days. Thanks!
Only feature I’d like is to have an option to see the entire song on the screen, and even print a pdf if copyrights allow. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which parts are coming up, and printout would solidify the song. But I do love the scrolling as a great learning method. Also buy a MIDI chord to recognize the notes spot on. The mic did good enough, but with the direct link I can play with headphones or a lot of noisy kids in the background and not miss a note.Show lessMiles-co
