Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good way to learn, October 10, 2005
This software does pretty much what it claims. It's neither clearly better nor clearly worse than the alternatives. Here are some specific notes which might be helpful to you:
* It's trapped in an un-resizeable DOS window. To get full-screen, you have to alter your monitor settings.
* You can use your QWERTY keyboard to play notes, but you have to reactivate a special window everytime you click elsewhere. Therefor, this feature is useful only for testing the software w/o a MIDI keyboard connected.
* There are about a dozen MIDI songs which you can upload to your MIDI keyboard (if your keyboard allows this). The rest of the songs are integrated into the program -- ie, not copyable.
* Contrary to the advertising, there are no REM songs. There is "Superman", which REM covered but did not write. (Good song though.)
* If you press "next" too early, you do not get credit for having viewed a lesson. This is good for a classroom, but annoying to me.
* I have gotten weird errors from the Music Recorder, but I didn't buy it for that anyway.
I bought Piano Suite 1 & 2, which is much cheaper. It contains only 80 songs and lacks the Composer (which also prints sheet music). For me it is a much better value than the Premier edition. It has all the lessons, the games, and the same basic player.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Really teaches you piano, but with some quirks, September 13, 2005
I had taken piano lessons for a while but found the expense and getting to the lessons a problem. Having a MIDI capable electronic keyboard and a PC, I figured this software might be a good investment. I'm happy to say that this program does just what I wanted it to do; I've learned to play better and am improving all the time.
Here's what the program does for me.
First, it can play the music so that I know what it should sound like when correctly played. Then, I can go through a piece of music a note at a time with the program telling me visually if I have hit the right key. I get a feel for finger placement. Then, using a metronome (with a counting voice or a tone) at a pace I set, it monitors my timing and shows me exactly where I held a note too long, or not long enough. The program does exactly what a good teacher would do by requiring you to play the right notes with just the right timing. You can isolate a part of the piece you are having trouble with and concentrate just on that bar or bars. You can print out the score. Mistakes are flagged and you see, by way of red notes, where you went wrong and in what way you erred. You will watch as your accuracy climbs until you have the piece mastered.
That's all good! The problems are with setup and saving settings. No two screens look alike. You wander through all kinds of icons, buttons and color schemes that have no uniformity. What is that red light up there by the picture of a piano? Hey, it's a button I can press! The graphics design folks went wild and that confuses the user. Fortunately, for practice sessions you simply have the score displayed on a white screen with a minimum of clutter.
When installing, obey the request that NO OTHER PROGRAMS BE OPEN. I found that unless I install this program with NO other programs running and then immediately install the version 2.66 patch (available from Adventus online) I would get unpredictable, annoying errors right in the middle of practice. A window would pop up telling me an error had been encountered and the program would crash.
The program settings can be confusing, are not all on one screen and are not saved! You may take a while to figure out why you don't hear something when you should, or you do hear something you don't want to hear. You will eventually get it right and then discover when next you run the program that nothing has been saved. So, though you have set volume levels, muted instruments, set the metronome speed, etc, before, you have to set them all again. Talk about frustrating! All that is remembered is the piece you were playing in your last session and the record of how you performed. You should be practicing music, not continually telling the program that you want the same environment you had the last time you played. This is such a basic requirement for ANY computer program that I'm amazed Piano Suite got through quality control the way it is. I've been expecting and hoping for a version 3 to appear that will be ready for prime time but version 2.6 stays with us.
So, I lead a loud cheer for the pedogogical part of this program, I don't know how it could be improved. People with knowledge and experience of music were undoubtedly involved and I am living proof that Piano Suite Premier teaches piano well. But the software programmers, please, would a SAVE SETTINGS, and a single graphics-free page to make the settings, be so hard to provide?
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Software-Highly recommended, April 18, 2004
These guys have definitely put a lot of thought into this product and must be dedicated music instructers. Set up is easy. Worked perfectly out of the box. I did have one minor problem with producing sounds other then piano, but I went to the Adventus website and downloaded a patch. It works great now! Theres lots of info there and a phone number for tech support.This is great software for beginners. No big jumps in lession difficulty, just a steady progression. Lots of user interaction with the software (ie, feedback about your playing, etc), games, computer generated vide, lots of songs to play and lots of different styles from classical to rock. I'm not even using the suggested Adventus set-up, that is, using a internal soundblaster wavetable sound card. Adventus warned of a lag in hearing a note after it was pressed and when the sound was produced if you didn't have an internal wavetable soundcard. I'm not having any "latency" issues. Maybe it is because I have a 1.7ghz computer, with a external M-Audio Firewire soundcard. This is a "pro" external sound card (it has no built in sounds of its own it just processes digital sound files that come out of your computer. For access to sounds you'll need software or you can rely on the internal Microsoft GS WaveTable Software Synthesizer built into Windows XP) and Firewire is fast. For those people using the external Soundblaster Audigy cards, I've read that there may be a "latency" issue. Read the magazine reviews at the Adventus Website if you don't believe me - www.adventus.com. Also, I recommend http://www.tweakheadz.com/ for lots of info on equipment for making and recording computer music. The forums are great, especially. This is quality software.
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