Harsh Taskmasters

As I attempt to shoehorn as much knowledge as I can into my calcified middle-aged brain in order to make up for decades of lost time, I've called upon a variety of learning aids. I read, and discarded, Piano for Dummies as an amusing but ultimately frivolous work. Oh there is some very good information, if you can set aside the author's attempts at humor, and the exercises are at least a half-step above the usual "Little Brown Jug" and "She'll be Comin' Around the Mountain" usually found in beginner's books, but you can tell it was written for people who probably don't intend to stick with the keyboard very tenaciously.

However, I found a suite of programs called KeyPiano (award-winning programs, no less) for $40 which promises to train you in speed sight-reading. It consists of a number of modules which train you to recognize notes, chords, intervals; to train your pitch, and all sorts of other skills. It races you against a clock to improve your time. It works. I've improved both my note-recognition and interval-recognition. It's also as addictive as a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or video game.

It is a no-nonsense tutor. When you get a correct answer, the word RIGHT! appears in bright, friendly green letters. But get an incorrect answer,and hoo-boy. The word WRONG! flashes in angry red. When I bought this program and sent my money through PayPal, the receipt was in German. Aha. The Germans always took their music training seriously. Ask Beethoven and Mozart. Those guys got their ears boxed if they gave wrong answers or missed a note. I guess I'm lucky a leather-gloved hand doesn't come out of my CD drive and give me one upside the head.

You have 150 seconds to beat a score of 300. On the first level, you earn 5 points for every note you identify. So you have to identify 60 notes in 150 seconds, which give you about 2.5 seconds to identify the note and hit the correct key on the simulated keyboard. The selection set includes both the treble and bass clefs as well as six notes above and below each clef. The notes appear at random on either clef. The same rules apply with the intervals drill.

I haven't tried the other modules of the program yet because I'm still getting my feet wet, but so far these two training tools have been a real help.