Three weeks after my article Can You Learn to Play the Piano Using an App? Part 1, an employee of Joytunes - developers of SimplyPiano - sent me an email in response to my review (which was less than favourable). Below is the entire correspondence between us.
Email from Josh DeMoya, received on 02/06/19 at 8:02 pm.
Dear Christopher,
My name is Josh De Moya and I work at JoyTunes as the Customer Success Manager. Our team came across your blog post review of Simply Piano and I wanted to take some time to reach out to you. First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to try our app and to leave detailed feedback on the experience. We are always looking for ways to improve your experience with Simply Piano and your input is essential to that.
Just a little background to who we are. We are a small team of music-loving musicians, teachers, and developers that is passionate about enabling anyone and everyone to have the ability to learn and play the piano. We created Simply Piano as an intro to the piano for those who have always dreamed of learning or may not otherwise consider playing and don’t have a teacher yet to get them excited about playing. As fellow music lovers and educators, we take your feedback very seriously.
We would have loved the chance to comment on your review, however, it appears we didn’t get an invitation as we normally respond. Can I ask what email you reached out to and from what email address to make sure there aren’t any errors on our side we should address?
Regarding Note Recognition, we are always working to improve this nuanced technology by updating it. However, there are some learners that have trouble with the app hearing the notes they are playing. Can I ask what type of piano you have? We always try to thoroughly help learners to resolve these issues. While we begin with the basic tips you mentioned, we also invite users to let us know if those do not solve the issue via email and in the app and we will continue to support all learners until the issue is resolved. When you referred to reaching out in the Play Store, do you mean through a review? We are limited in characters there and can't be as nuanced and therefore, while we do offer suggestions there, we also enable users to email us inside and outside the app for support on any issue.
In terms of features, the Song Library is currently available on iOS and we are excited to release it very soon to Android users as well. The songs began within the courses to ensure that learners won't miss any fundamental skills along the way. We also balance this value with the need for practice opportunities and students who already have some background and therefore added the Song Library feature. We look forward to also offering the Song Library for Android.
I do want to emphasize that it is actually extremely important to us for our learners to become proficient and independent in sightreading. Our team includes expert music teachers and musicians who guide the development of our pedagogy, content, and features. The notes being shown to the learners is not immediate and we work hard to balance independence with not leaving learners unsupported, certainly a delicate balance. We also do have lessons on rhythm, posture, and other important habits and techniques. Again, we're happy to revisit these and invite your feedback to improve them, however, I don't want to leave you under the impression that these are completely absent or that we look to create a superficial learning experience. Quite the opposite.
Again, we appreciate your time and feedback and look forward to continual growth and improvement to bring the joy of music learning to many more around the world. I will be away on vacation for a bit, but I am happy to answer any further questions you have regarding Simply Piano or this response or have a colleague be in touch.
Best regards,
Josh
Reply from Christopher Johnston, sent on 04/06/2019 at 9:44 pm.
Hi Josh,
Thanks for getting in touch with me. First of all, I would like to apologise sincerely for not inviting you to comment on my review. I had intended to do this, however, in all honesty, I had not expected to receive a reply.
In answer to your questions: I used Simply Piano with my upright piano, which was made by Venables & Son and modelled on a Yamaha U3 piano (Chris Venables has been a Yamaha dealer for 30 years and has put his name to a family of pianos using Yahama parts). I did indeed raise my issues with the note recognition with a review in the Google Play Store, thank you for clarifying the limitations on replies with this platform.
As you saw from my review, I had some major problems with the note recognition which severely hampered my progress in the classes. Did you read my reviews for the other two apps? While neither of them was perfect, the faults did not prevent me from completing classes and unlocking new content, as they did in Simply Piano. One of the apps reviewed allows you to unlock advanced content by completing a “skills test”, so that more advanced users can demonstrate they are proficient enough to attempt harder songs, without having to complete the prerequisite classes.
I think the inclusion of a song library will be a welcome addition when it arrives on Android; in the meantime, I shall dig out an old iOS device to give it a try.
Having read my review I’m sure you will have noted that I took serious issue with the claim that users can make “fast progress with 10 minutes a week”. Whilst using Simply Piano I could see that a lot of work has been put into creating the classes, no doubt from a team that has a genuine passion for music. It is astonishing to me that this same group of people are preaching that 10 minutes a week is enough to realise your piano playing dreams, which is quite simply not true.
I do think that your team (and the teams working on similar apps) have a very difficult job in striking that balance between support and independence, mostly because every student will require a different combination of the two which constantly fluctuates as they progress. For this, and other reasons, I don’t believe that somebody can learn the piano from scratch using only an app. It is not enough simply to illustrate good postures and important habits, students need these things nurtured in them by a teacher. It is an important relationship that depends upon an exchange of information; I learn a great deal from the insights my students have as much as they do from my own experiences.
This is not to say that I consider apps such as yours to be obsolete, on the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised both with the amount of content I found and also with the supporting exercises - such as aural training - in the other two apps. The song libraries are also a great resource to have on hand. Because of this, I have decided to do a follow-up post, looking at how apps are best used to learn the piano.
My biggest moan about Simply Piano – note recognition aside – is that it only teaches by rote, without offering any supplementary exercises that would be genuinely helpful to serious piano students. Instead, Simply Piano seems more like an app to indulge casual users with a passing interest in piano playing, rather than offering a meaningful learning experience with the potential to grow into a serious pursuit.
Statements such as “fast progress” and “everything you need” are very misjudged, particularly when considering the limitations of learning exclusively through an app. If I weigh these statements against the singular, rote-learning approach, I’m afraid Simply Piano does come across as superficial.
While I have no desire to hurt small businesses, I feel that I have evaluated Simply Piano and the other two apps fairly. I had no prejudice when beginning the reviews and I remain open to any features that you are planning to add. I am working on a follow-up post looking at how the apps I reviewed can be used in conjunction with piano lessons, I would be happy to publish any comments you have in this post or as an addition to the original review. If my issues with note-recognition can be resolved I would also be happy to re-evaluate Simply Piano in a fresh review. I am certainly interested to try your lessons on rhythm, posture and important piano habits.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me, I look forward to your reply. Please feel free to give me a ring if you wish to discuss anything over the phone, my landline is +44********* (if I don’t pick up it is because I am teaching, in which case call back in half an hour).
All the best,
Chris
Reply from Josh DeMoya, received on 04/07/19 at 2:43 pm.
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for getting back to me. I just got back earlier this week and need to catch up on a few projects, but I plan to get back to you next week.
Be in touch soon,
Josh
This was the last email I received from Josh. I can only assume that he is still catching up on projects.
