Piano vs Touch Notation
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Piano
This virtual piano app offers a full 88-key experience with recording capabilities for both piano play and voice. It features intuitive keyboard switching and a dual keyboard display, making it versatile for entertainment, training, and sharing musical creations.
- 88-key virtual piano
- Record piano and voice
- Intuitive keyboard switching
- Dual keyboard display
- Share soundtracks and sheet music
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This is a full 88-key virtual piano designed for ease of use and versatility. **Discover a fun and easy way to play piano while building real skills.** This app is designed for users who want more than just a virtual keyboard. You can enjoy playing piano anytime, and also improve step by step through **87 training levels** created to help develop your music skills in a simple and engaging way. Whether you are a beginner starting your first notes or someone who wants to strengthen rhythm, accuracy, and finger control, this app gives you a smooth path to practice and progress. **Features:** * Play piano directly on your device * Train your skills with **80+ guided levels** * Improve note recognition, timing, rhythm, and coordination * Practice in a fun and interactive way * Suitable for beginners and growing learners * Learn at your own pace, anytime and anywhere Each training level is designed to help you build confidence little by little, so learning feels rewarding instead of overwhelming. You can enjoy the fun of playing songs while also sharpening the core skills needed for better piano performance. Turn practice into progress and make piano learning more enjoyable every day.
Touch Notation
Create musical scores with intuitive touch gestures. Draw notes, add expressions, and play back your compositions with 30 instrument voices. Export your work in various formats.
- Handwritten notation input
- 30 built-in instrument voices
- Tempo and dynamics control
- Page layout functions
- Transpose feature
- Multiple export formats (PDF, SMF, MusicXML)
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Touch Notation is a powerful musical score creation app that allows anyone to enjoy writing music using touch gestures. In Japan, Touch Notation was selected as one of the ‘App Store Best of 2014’ apps, and held the No.1 spot in the iPad Paid App index for music apps for over two weeks. Up until now, musical score creation software has relied upon dragging individual notes from a palette onto staves. By contrast, Touch Notation allows musicians to draw directly onto the score using a finger or touch pen, and have their work immediately appear as beautifully written notation, then played back using the app’s 30 built-in instrument voices. - A wide-range of functions accessible from a cleanly designed, intuitive user interface. - Ability to enter musical expressions for adjusting tempo and dynamics. - Layout functions such as page breaks. - Convenient transpose feature for raising/lowering the pitch of the entire score. - Output scores using Air Print, or save to Dropbox in PDF, SMF, MusicXML, and ScoreMaker formats. Touch Notation allows the following musical symbols to be entered by hand: - Note, Rest (including dotted and double-dotted), Long Rest, Beam, Tuplet (Triplet) - Grace Note - Accidental, Tie, Slur - Accent, Staccato, Tenuto, Fermata - Trill, sfz, Arpeggio, Pedal, Senza - Metronome symbol - Crescendo, Decrescendo - Dynamics symbols (ppp~fff) - Octave symbol - Repeat brackets - Repeat marks (D.C./Fine/D.S./Segno/Coda/to Coda) - Clefs (Treble Clef/Bass Clef/C Clef/Percussion Clef) - Key signature - Time signature - Bar lines (repeat marks) - Abbreviation Lyrics and other musical expressions (‘Dolce’, ‘Tranquillo’, etc.) can be added using text input, while comments and memos can also be written freehand directly onto the score. * Drum notation is supported, but other types such as rhythm notation and tab notation are not supported. * Older devices may experience stuttering when playing complicated scores with many simultaneous notes.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Piano at Free against Touch Notation's $9.99. Piano also leads on rating (5.0 vs 2.9). Touch Notation's advantage is review sentiment (45% vs 9%) and update cadence (every 3 months vs every 12 months). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Piano is free to download; Touch Notation costs $9.99 up front. Piano sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Touch Notation sells 10 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Piano holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 2.9. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Touch Notation has 21 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 9% of Piano's written reviews are positive against 45% of Touch Notation's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Piano ships an update every 12 months, Touch Notation every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 20, 2026 and September 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Piano | Touch Notation |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 2.9 (21 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 8.8% of reviews | 44.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 21 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 12 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 112 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Alteru Inc. | Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co., Ltd. |
Customer experience
Piano
Touch Notation
In-app purchases
Piano
- Piano Ads Free$1.99
Touch Notation
- Sound Set: Piano$0.49
- Sound Set: Guitar/Bass 1$0.49
- Sound Set: Strings$0.49
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- Sound Set: Brass/Woodwind$0.49
- Sound Set: Bell/Mallet$0.49
- Sound Set: Vocal/Others$0.49
- Core MIDI Output$1.99
- Handwritten Font$1.99
- Sound Set: Full$2.99
- Chord Name & Automatic Accompaniment$3.99









