Playground SessionsReviews of playgroundsessions.com

I've emailed them twice now, plus multiple messages/comments on Facebook about the 3 annual codes I purchased, only one of which works. I have received exactly zero response. Tomorrow I will be filing fraud charges thru my bank if they don't fix this and start our time over. Over a month of waiting for customer service to respond and 3 months of time lost on my paid annual subscription is unacceptable. I'd love to know how they get all these glowing reviews on Facebook with such terrible customer service.

Way too difficult once you get a little further in rookie mode. Other similar apps are much easier for beginners.

Their new app is unusable for the purposes of teaching piano on Windows due to audio latency. The older version of the app allowed you to select an audio device, but they rewrote it in electron and now you can't select low latency drivers. THIS IS CRITICAL FOR AN APP TO LEARN THE PIANO: TIMING IS CRITICAL! They need to fix this! If they fixed this problem, it would probably be a 5-star review, but it's been almost 2 years since I first reported the issue and they seem to have no desire to fix it since I've already paid a lifetime subscription.

pay for this course yearly and I can honestly say I've really benefitted from it; I genuinely believe I can actually play the piano now and I can even add my own little improvisational bits and sight-read music confidently, which was a huge goal for me. My only setback is playing by ear, which is still a work in progress, but that's entirely on me as I don't practice that specific skill enough. For new users, be aware that the search function isn't great—I had the service for a month before I realized how much more of a catalogue was actually on offer—so make sure you explore it all! If you want to learn how to play the piano, read music, and much more, then absolutely give this a go: It gets my full recommendation.

On Monday 8th of January I subscribed Paying £14.30. Sadly the audio sync was wildly out and the ability to sync the audio has been removed in v3 of their software rendering the software completley unusable for me. They sent me a link to download v2 of their software which i had already used years ago. v2 is extremely buggy and i was not interested in using it again. I immediately cancelled the auto renew on my account. However on Wednesday 14th February of 2024 I was charged again this time for £20.42. I once again cancelled this time on March 3rd. However on Friday 8th m March I was billed once again, this time for £16.23. Then again on Monday 8th April for £20.47, again on Weds 8th May £20.54 and again on Monday 10th Jun for £20.17. I contacted the company via email where they admit that they can in fact see that I have cancelled this twice already. However, they are claiming I repurchased the software myself on Thurs 7th March 2024. This company has taken £112.13 from my account. While I only authorised the first payment of £14.30. They are now completely ignoring me, i have been forced to contact my bank regarding this and filing a dispute. I have also reported them to the FTC for fraud and theft. Stay the hell away from this company!! Update: While the support team eventually agreed to refund me, it wasn’t until after the bank had already sided with me and given me most of the money back even if it was not all of it.

Bought an arrangement of mia and sebastians theme from la la land, claiming to be the "full song" with fingering, turned out to be only half the song

Be aware that if you buy a lifetime subscription you get dealt with very differently by customer services, they know you can't go elsewhere without losing out. I asked from my progress to be reset as Ive been away for a while and they have flatly refused. If I was on a monthly subscription I would go elsewhere but I'm stuck with them.

Been using this system every single day for 5 months (42% of my way through bootcamp) and I'm starting to wonder if it will ever take me to my goal of competency with playing and sight reading. Simplified playing along to songs with live feeback is clever, but the feedback system essentially demands 100% note accuracy and 90% timing or you fail. This is increasingly difficult and frustrating as the song tempo and complexity increases. No live piano teacher would be so demanding. Progress is NOT linear - there are some VERY fast pieces early on that throw a total spanner in the works of your steady progress, only to be followed by an easy piece again. Worse still, sessions actively disincentivises longer practice, because a single note wrong will ruin your progress, requiring a reset, and after doing that a few times, frustration likely causes you to quit in irritation. My bro is doing the program at his home, and he says exactly the same thing. Worse still, the program outright bugs out, with the live position indicator varying its speed of tracking through some pieces, and refusing to read my bro's piano half the time. Also there are zero TECHNIQUE tutorials as part of the actual course. Where should I sit, how should I hold my hands, how long should I stick with each song? Some you can 100% in a day, others take weeks or longer. What other skills should I be practicing? How hard should I press the keys? Is it okay to look at the keyboard? Am I better or worse than the average player? Sure there are videos on youtube, if I want to go looking for them, but they are not integrated into the Rookie course for instance, whereas I would expect them to be fundamental parts of learning. There's a vast amount of content, but no cohesive thread guiding you through it. Yes, there's a numbered rookie, intermediate, and advanced section where you simply play a variety of songs, but they alone are not enough to guide you to competency. The gameified learning is superb, but just as playing Scrabble won't teach you how to become a writer, I'm starting to fear, that this program will not ultimately teach me piano. I enjoy the system, and so far as I can see, it's the only course that gives you constant live feedback; even if it feels like a short tempered teacher constantly ready to rap you over the knuckles with a ruler for each mistake. The song variety is broad enough to keep it interesting, and even when you encounter songs you dislike, you know the next might be more to your taste. In any case, you'll come to hate even the ones you used to like after repeating them for a solid month. ;-) There are SO many great ways to adjust the playing - including adjusting the number of bars on a line, changing the zoom, the playback speed, whether fingers, note names, or neither are displayed, and much more. The tunes do not play along when you go to the slower speeds. There are SOOO many ways that this course could be better, but there are also SOOO many great things about it. I don't regret buying the lifetime course for me and my bro. He has stuck with this, whereas he never did with a live teacher. I would like to see the company make more regular improvements to the software and course design and structure. The presenters are really likable, even if you don't see enough of them. I would buy again, especially in one of the constant sales, but there's great room for improvement.