Playground SessionsReviews of playgroundsessions.com

I was really bothered and disappointed and had actually given them 2 stars. I expected a good working app, but it didn't work in my Pixel 10 XL Pro. Eventually, I started using my wife's iPad and it works just fine. I appreciate the quality of Playground Sessions' lessons, but had encountered two frustrating issues. First, the loop feature is difficult to use because I can't accurately place the start and end markers where I want them. The markers consistently end up in the wrong location, making it hard to practice specific sections. Second, the interactive score isn't properly aligned. When I tap a note to see its location on the virtual keyboard, the app often highlights a completely different note or jumps to another section of the score instead. These issues make it much more difficult to isolate measures and review note placement during practice. I hope the developers address these touch-calibration/display problems in a future update because the app has a lot of potential otherwise. I had never been so discouraged to use an app before and thought I would have to deal with this for a whole year until I borrowed my wife's iPad.

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.

Detects my Yamaha p125 keyboard well. Have a lot of learning courses. However things are a bit messy. Dont know where to start if youre a beginner.

I am enjoying the program. However, it is geared towards keyboards. I have an acoustic piano. There are other 'learn to play the piano' programs available where I can use the microphone on my computer and the program assesses my performance. This would be a nice feature to have on Playground.

I have a current yearly membership and then bought the thanksgiving special to kick in after the current one expires but am not sure if the special automatically starts when the current one expires or if i now have two overlapping ones. Overall I am pretty happy with playground sessions, only thing I would like is to be able to have the music go at my pace instead of having a preset tempo. I don't want to have to go slow for the entire piece when I only have difficulty with a small portion

Too early to tell.

I don’t have the wire that connects my electric piano and my iPod yet so it is limited with what I can do. My daughter is getting me one and I’m looking forward to using the program.

Struggling with keys. Is there a way to make the font larger. I am having struggles with reading the numbers