Skoove

What is Skoove

Skoove is the up and coming challenger of online piano learning apps. Skoove’s lessons are suited for players of all skill levels. You can learn using your phone, tablet (iOS only), or your computer using the microphone or a MIDI cable.

What's it about

The app starts very simply. You need to be able to engage in the website to start off with, as this is really informative and helps you to understand what the app is really about. The design is really simple, and you can work your way through the site to gain a full understanding. This gives you a great start to engaging in the app.

When you first start the app, it asks you to log in, in a variety of ways, including logging in via Facebook, which is often the easiest way to create log-ins and saves you a lot of time!

Once you sign up for the Premium account, it unlocks all the availability in the App. Premium is not cheap. However, with the amount of lessons, development and feedback on the app, it is well worth the money. Whilst a live teacher is always the most effective way to learn, if that is not an option for you, this is certainly far cheaper than a personal tutor, and if you are disciplined enough to decide and set your practice times, this is certainly an app that will help you to engage.

As you work through just a few theoretical and ‘simple’ ideas e.g. learning the note D or C, it doesn’t take long until a song appears for you to play along with. I really like this way of learning. It helps you to feel that you can achieve huge things, whilst a backing track is provided for you. There is also a xylophone that plays your part along with you so that you can hear what you should be playing. If the app can’t hear you playing, it will stop to check in with you.

One thing that most apps don’t identify, is the clear health and safety within playing the piano. However, this app does! It talks about hand positioning and seating positions, and provides you with videos, in order to ensure that they are taking care of the individual care of the student too.

You may be an absolute beginner, which is absolutely fine for this app. It introduces some simple theory through video and practice, instead of the boring ‘fill in the gaps’ worksheets that so much theory is based upon. However, if you can already play some piano, or read some music, you can skip through these lessons, or work through them quickly, to progress on to other aspects with just a quick refresh of your knowledge. You could scroll past all of the simpler lessons, or go over and over them if that’s what you need. The app suits the pace that you want to go at.

If you know where your weakness is, you can focus on certain subjects. For example, there is a beginner theory lesson on sight reading, or one on theory. You can move past all the beginner songs and starter lessons, and move to the on-screen Intermediate Piano lessons, and play pop and film hits like Piano Man, Game of Thrones, The Scientist, or James Bond. It provides such a wide range of songs and pieces of music, there is something for everyone. There are identified and targeted topics of ‘Classic’ Piano where you can focus on more traditional pieces of music, develop your skills with musical theory, and build expression and performance skills throughout. Alternatively, there are also lessons on Blues and Jazz, to develop alternative styles.

There are also ‘Artist Focus’ lessons, where you can focus on just one style and one artist, such as the singer-songwriter Remme, or The Beatles, as well as building skills through understanding of chords and scales. There are also topics on keyboards for producers, helping students to understand the difference between playing piano, and developing chord patterns, compositions, arranging music, and identifying the theoretical understanding of extended chords through this process. There is just so much variation and education on this app, that it is certainly of real interest for anyone who wants to develop their skills on the piano.

The only disappointment I find is that none of the app is accessible without internet access. It would be good if you could download at least the next ‘5 lessons’ that you are working towards, so that if you perhaps, have to go to a garage to play your piano and you have no internet access, you can still learn those 5 lessons. Of course, the chat options wouldn’t be available, but it would make such a huge difference if there was at least some availability without internet access. If some songs were ‘downloadable’ this might be a good idea.

A few interesting ‘keywords’ came up that I was surprised to hear. In the UK, we have never named the two black keys on a keyboard as the ‘twins’. I would be wary of naming things that aren’t universally known, as this may become confusing when discussing with others or trying to clarify with other people.

What is a little confusing is the full set up of the keyboard. There are options to connect your keyboard via the microphone (the easiest), Bluetooth, or MIDI cable. However on the website, it states that a virtual keyboard can be used on the device. This doesn’t seem to be available on the iPhone. If it is, it’s certainly not clear where this is. That said, the chat support is so visually available, that any problems with your keyboards can be easily fixed with their remote support.

I love this app. I hope they continue to develop and add more lessons, as I know there are lots of adults out there who had lessons as a child, who would like to continue their learning in their own time. This is ideally suited to those people. It also works excellently with teenagers, with such good visuals and instant feedback. A great app.

You can download Skoove on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the Skoove app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.