Songscription blog & music transcription resources
Explore Songscription’s guides to music transcription, sheet music, MIDI, piano roll, and AI-powered music learning, plus product updates and company announcements from the Songscription team.
Learning songs from a piano roll: how to read the falling-notes view, slow a part down without changing its pitch, and go from a recording to something you can play along with.
Piano roll
26 articles- Tutorial10 min readHow to learn video game music on pianoOne of the most requested and least available categories of piano repertoire there is. Learning it is mostly a problem of getting accurate notes, and only then a problem of practicing.Tutorial · · 10 min read
- Tutorial10 min readHow to learn worship songs on pianoA set list arrives Tuesday and has to be ready Sunday, in the singer’s key. The skill you are really building is a repeatable process for turning a recording into something playable.Tutorial · · 10 min read
- Tutorial10 min readHow to learn international songs on pianoIf the songs you grew up with are Hindi film songs, Korean ballads or Nigerian afrobeats, the catalog is not missing them because they are unsuitable for a piano.Tutorial · · 10 min read
- Resources9 min readIs there a piano app that listens to you play?Yes, and most of them do it now. The interesting part is what they are listening for, where microphone detection breaks down, and what no app can hear at all.Resources · · 9 min read
- Resources10 min readCan AI teach you piano? An honest answerTeaching an instrument is three jobs, not one. Machine learning has largely solved two of them and made essentially no progress on the third, and knowing which is which tells you what to buy.Resources · · 10 min read
- Resources9 min readHow long does it take to learn a song on piano?Two to four weeks for a beginner on a simple pop song, a few days for an intermediate player, and months for a Chopin ballade. Here is what actually moves those numbers.Resources · · 9 min read
- Resources9 min readCan you learn piano without a MIDI keyboard?Yes, and most people asking already own the instrument they need. Here is what a MIDI cable actually buys you, which apps accept both inputs, and how to set a room up so the app can hear you.Resources · · 9 min read
- Tutorial7 min readHow to create a piano tutorial for any songThe falling-notes piano tutorials you see on YouTube start from a transcription. Here is how to turn any recording into a piano roll you can slow down and play along with.Tutorial · · 7 min read
- Tutorial6 min readLearn a song section by section with a piano rollTo learn a hard song, slow it down and work one short section at a time. Here is how a slowed-down piano roll makes that practice faster and clearer.Tutorial · · 6 min read
- Resources7 min readHow to learn a song that isn’t in your piano appPiano apps teach from a fixed library, so the song you actually want is often missing. Here is how to learn any song, even one no app offers, by turning the recording itself into something you can play along with.Resources · · 7 min read
- Resources6 min readHow to read a piano rollA piano roll turns music into a simple picture: pitch goes up, time goes right, and each bar is a note you hold. Here is how to read one, even if you have never read sheet music.Resources · · 6 min read
- Resources7 min readWhat is a piano roll? Why musicians who can’t read sheet music should learn to love itA piano roll shows music as colored bars moving across a grid: higher means higher, longer means longer, and that is most of what you need to know. For anyone who never learned to read notation, it is the friendliest way into a song there is.Resources · · 7 min read
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