Magix Piano & Keyboard Workshop

by Navarre (Software)

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004GP53
• Item model number: 608101
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,297 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Magix Piano and Keyboard Workshop offers an appealing piano-practice tool designed for any beginning or intermediate musician with a MIDI keyboard or piano. With several features to improve your sight-reading abilities, this package is ideal for the younger user, but should be useful to adult players as well.

There are some 30 songs to practice in Piano and Keyboard Workshop. (More are available from Magix's Web site.) The selection of tunes centers on simple melodies such as "Alouette" and "Amazing Grace" to snippets of recognizable music from Bach, Beethoven, and Scott Joplin. In Teach mode, the program displays a keyboard indicating the correct keys to play. When you play on your MIDI-enabled keyboard, the Workshop synchs up your notes with the onscreen display. We liked being able to hide each staff so you could work on right-hand and left-hand parts separately, and the "loop" music was a pleasant way to get in some effective practice.

Definitely the most fun we had here is with the Backing mode in which you play a simple melody and hear a small electronic orchestra behind you. In this mode, your piano tracks are backed up by additional MIDI voices. (If you have any decent sound card or keyboard, you'll sound quite impressive, even just playing a single line of melody.) This feature should provide plenty of positive reinforcement to young musical ears, to help them keep practicing.

Another feature that will please younger users is the Game mode, which tests your ability to read music against several electronic musical "judges," with varying levels of difficulty. Here, swatches of music appear onscreen, and it's up to you to play the correct notes and/or rhythm. Electronic judges include Mr. Easy and Ms. Strict (well, admittedly not the most inventive of names). But with the most difficult, Mr. Guru, the game proved very challenging, with notably difficult dotted rhythms and plenty of 32nd notes that will test the sight-reading abilities of any piano student.

Overall, Piano and Keyboard Workshop offers an inexpensive, yet useful, tool for practicing music with any MIDI-compatible keyboard. You'll probably want to use this program alongside traditional--or electronic lessons--for additional background musical material, but there's little doubt this tool can hone your basic piano skills. --Rich Dragan

Amazon.com Product Description

Teach yourself how to play your favorite songs using Magix Piano & Keyboard Workshop. This software uses the MIDI file format so you can download from a huge selection on the Internet. Featuring 30 well-known songs in different styles, it automatically creates lessons and exercises for different levels of experience directly from the song files. Notes appear on the screen while the songs play--making practicing easy and fun.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Does not work on XP, April 28, 2006

By 

Anna Kuklosis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magix Piano & Keyboard Workshop (CD-ROM)

The price of this might lead you to think it's worth a try..but XP users be aware that it does not work -brings up an error screen right at the outset..I've tried it on two machines. If you read the reviews for the version 2, which I have just got, then I would say one star is a little harsh, but then again... the metronome/count in on mine is highly erratic to the extent that it's more of an offputting hindrance than a help - it seems to play an almost random selection of the beats but never the full number for whatever is indicated by the time signiature.. sounds like a 70's jazz rock drummer most of the time! Because of this it's quite difficult/impossible to do the rhythm tests. Also the way the staves are presented on screen could develop bad eye-tracking habits that pass over into your paper copy reading..because it only presents two lines of measures at any one time once the upper line has played through it refreshs the screen with the measures following the bottom on the top.. as a result if your developing the habit of reading ahead as you should be you end up reading above your current position which never happens in the real world.