Soft Mozart or Piano Wizard: My Decision

Yesterday I finally made up my mind and placed an order for Soft Mozart (Home Version).

Although my initial intention was to test both programmes and pick the one best suited for LM, I decided not to try out PW and simply went for SM.

The reasons for this decision are numerous. First of all, LM seems to have made a very good progress with a demo version of SM, which, no doubt, would not be possible with traditional lessons in LM’s case. She can now play a passable “rendition” (well, for a four-year-old!) of “Ode to Joy” on the third presentation (both hands and no assistance from me) and, now that she is getting comfortable navigating the game herself, she has been insisting on playing it on the sixth presentation, which shows the piece in an equivalent of conventional notation. This has been going quite well too and although at this stage she is probably relying on her memory, she does appear to refer to the screen and follows the notes with her gaze. Since this method seems to be working, I feel discouraged to try an alternative. Even if PW is a superior method, trying it now would probably cause confusion since LM has got a good hang of SM’s approach.

Secondly, there are many things I came to liking about SM, which I could not find in PW, at least not in the available videos, and which I would be very likely to miss in PW if I tried it. Please correct me if I am wrong and have misinterpreted the videos, as I have never actually tried PW. For instance, even at the most basic level SM prominently shows the lines of the great stave coloured in such way that it leaves no room for confusion as to which part should be played by which hand. In PW these lines are quite feeble and I can see how that might be somewhat confusing to LM.

In SM each piece can be presented in six ways of gradually increasing difficulty. In PW the levels are four, and I feel that the transition from level 3 to level 4 could be too steep for LM. Although this might go easily with pieces she would have practiced and partially memorised, I think overall it would take her longer to come to the stage where she could sight-read unknown pieces at that presentation or even from sheets, which is the ultimate goal of both approaches. Also, as I have mentioned before, having same colours representing different notes and different colours representing same notes, would not help the transition, neither would it make it easy for her to differentiate between notes lying on the lines and those in the spaces between the lines of the staves when learning to read sheet music.

SM lets you stop and think before playing each note and would not move until you get it right, while in PW notes keep scrolling up and if you did not hit the correct one at the correct time, you have missed it. As much as I agree with Chris that a “note played out of time is not a correct note”, in my very modest layman opinion, if I wanted to learn to read music notation, I would want to be able to be more in control of the flow, at least initially, and to stop and see how each key relates to the staves, just as I would want to stop and think when reading a text-book. I do, however, realise that with SM, I would need to do some additional work to help LM understand rhythm and note duration.

SM places a lot of emphasis on learning solfeggio and, as someone with a few years of attending an ex-Soviet music school (although all happily buried in the past!), I relate deeply to it. I did not notice any such emphasis in PW.

Last, but not least, SM has a cheaper basic version with an option of upgrading it to the deluxe version in the future which is so much “friendlier” to our family pocket.

I have come across a few negative points mentioned regarding SM but none of these were major stumbling blocks for me or LM. SM does not have a polished and sophisticated interface, but it does the trick for LM who is completely unsophisticated in terms of video games. In the long-term the novelty of a more flashy game would ultimately wear off and, at the end of the day, it is not a game I am looking for but a tool for helping LM to learn and SM delivers in this respect. LM does not see it as a toy anyway as I have so far used SM as part of very short (5 to 15 minutes) but focused and strongly reinforced sessions. I do, however, let her navigate the game herself and make choices regarding which hand to play and on what presentation, so she does feel in control of her learning. She is also very motivated about these sessions as she always gets a small prize at the end. I feel this way I can ensure the method works for her in the long-term too.

Finally, I would like to emphasize that this decision has been made purely on the grounds of what programme I think is likely to be a better fit for LM. This does not mean that what, in my opinion, would or would not work for her, would equally apply to another child. None of the above comments were intended as criticism of PW which I have never used. Neither am I affiliated in any way with SM and I paid the full price for the product.

I do believe that both programmes are quite break-throughs and it is great that I was in  a position of choosing between the two.