The MuseFlow Blog

The piano is one of the most popular instruments in the world, so it’s no surprise that there are so many movies about it. The world of cinema has captured a wide range of piano stories, from upbeat musicals and comedies to heartbreaking dramas and even tense thrillers.

We here at MuseFlow want to see what we can we learn from these movies about our own musical journeys. So let’s dive in and see what Hollywood has to say about playing the piano!

‍Amadeus (1984)

This critically acclaimed period drama tells the story of an imagined rivalry between the uptight, popular, and mediocre composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) and brash, irreverent, and brilliant virtuoso Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce).

The movie not only scooped up 8 Oscars, but also brilliantly captured the jealousy that can occur when you work really hard at your craft and then see someone who seems to be so much more successful and making it look so easy! We’ve all been there. But learning to shift our focus towards our own work is much healthier than doing what Salieri did (going down a lifelong spiral of sabotage and revenge)!

‍La La Land (2016)

It’s hard to think about piano movies and not hear the catchy opening melody of “Another Day of Sun.” The musical tells the story of aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and struggling pianist Seb (Ryan Gosling) as they encounter the conflicts of pursuing love and career in the “City of Stars.” La La Land is a bright, wondrous love letter to jazz and Hollywood that romanticizes show business while also reminding us of its ability to break hearts.

Like Seb, many piano players know what its like to feel stuck. We know how it feels to have to play songs we don’t like, whether that be through lessons or gigs. But at its core, La La Land is a movie about believing in yourself. There’ll be setbacks and self-doubt. But if you have a heart full of passion, maybe “that’ll be the thing to push you on and over.”

‍Ray (2004)

Ray tells the story of musician Ray Charles, detailing his life from his impoverished beginnings, struggles with blindness and heroin, and his career blending jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel to create a brand new genre: soul.

Most people remember Ray for Jamie Foxx’s brilliant and charismatic portrayal of Ray Charles, which earned him the Oscar for Best Actor. But the most relatable thing about music biopics is the way they humanize these larger than life musicians. As we watch stars’ often humble beginnings and personal struggles, we see that these are human beings with flaws and insecurities.

It can be great to have musicians to look up to. But remembering that they’re all just human beings like you and me can help remind us that we’re all capable of greatness too!

Soul (2020)

Peanut butter and jelly. Cheese and crackers. Pixar movies and balling your eyes out. These things just go together…and Soul is no different. It tells the incredibly moving story of middle school teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx again), who falls down a manhole right before his big break, sending his soul into the Great Beyond. There he meets 22 (Tina Fey), a stubborn soul who is resistant to living life on Earth.

It’s easy to hang our self-worth on our creative/career success, but Soul director Pete Docter says to NPR, “we’re already enough…We all can walk out of the door and enjoy life without needing to accomplish or prove anything. And that’s really freeing.” You can reframe your musical passions as the things you do because you love them, not because you need to hit some arbitrary metric of success in order to have a “successful” life!

Conclusion

There are many more piano movies that we can’t even get to in this post. But when looking at all of these movies, a common message shines through. The best movies about piano aren’t about how to play the piano…they’re about why we play it.

Learning the piano can be wonderful, frustrating, stressful, and creatively fulfilling…sometimes all at the same time. But at the end of the day, your music journey is your own. Find your passion, be true to yourself, and stay grounded.

At MuseFlow, we know that learning the piano should be fun and meet you where you’re at. Our lessons:

• Offer indefinite sheet music for constant variety and new-to-you songs for sight reading.
• Encourage Flow State over rote repetition.
• Provide incremental learning that perfectly challenges you at your skill level without feeling too easy or too hard.
  

So go watch one of these great piano movies, get inspired, and then come back and learn with us!

Neuroplasticity is defined simply as the brain's ability to rewire itself to new experiences. This can happen in response to injury, for example, but the brain also gets all neuroplastic when learning new things. Below, we're going to dive deeper into how the mechanism of neuroplasticity actually works, and how we can leverage it.

First, this is how your brain is supposed to work. There are a lot of ideas floating around out there about how skill and intelligence are fixed, or that there is a certain point of development where plasticity stops. Not only is that not true, but your brain is actually designed specifically to acknowledge, absorb, and adapt to new information all throughout your life.

The Chemistry Behind Learning

We have certain neurons in our brain that release a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is essential for learning and memory, as well as a number of other vital bodily functions. We release it under conditions of focused attention to stimulus. It’s the neurotransmitter that, for example, regulates heart rate. Over time, plasticity is built as acetylcholine creates new pathways as we learn new things, and our brain learns to prioritize those pathways and deprioritize the pathways that don't contribute.

Start With a Challenging, Meaningful Skill

Your first step to successful skill retention is going to be choosing a skill that is challenging and novel. For example, the piano. Whether you are fresh to the bench or refreshing your arpeggios, decide on something that is new-to-you, challenging, and has some personal relevance to you. Neuroplastic change is associated with a sense of feeling rewarded.

Attention: Focus Builds Pathways

Next, attention is critical. Uninterrupted focus on your new habit for an amount of time, let's say 20 minutes a day, allows your brain the ability to form the pathways we want it to. We're going to call this step, Attention. This step will not work if you're multitasking - you have to completely focus, undividedly, on the task.

Repetition: Strengthening What You Build

Once these new pathways have been formed, it's important to remember that the brain is constantly evolving. This means that it’s important to keep strengthening and refining these pathways that we’ve worked so hard to build!

In order to solidify our changes from chemical to structural, we need to do the next step, which we're going to call, Repetition. We're going to define repetition as continuing this intense focused attention for a prolonged period of time. The study I'm referencing showed a progressive plasticity when continued over a period of several weeks.

Why Consistency Is So Hard

If you’re like me at all, then choosing a new habit and staring down a period of several weeks usually looks like giving up in a few days and a barrage of self-admonishment. Instead, in the interest of plasticity, we’re going to add in our next step: Adjustment.

As an example, let’s follow our friend Penelope Piano, who has decided to set a resolution to learn a song on the piano for her friend’s birthday. She sits down on the first day for an hour, the second day for 45 minutes, and misses the third day altogether. A week later, she acknowledges that she hasn’t kept up with her practice. She gets frustrated with herself and swears she’ll sit down for 90 minutes the next day to make up for it.

While I certainly hope Ms. Piano meets her goal, neuroplastic changes take time. The route that she took can end up creating a pathway in her brain that associates the piano with obligation and frustration. Instead, she could have acknowledged that she hasn’t met her goal, and adjusted to a more manageable time to start, such as 15-20 minutes - or perhaps changed her practice time to a time of day where her energy levels were different.

Make the Experience Positive (Or You’ll Lose It)

Since these pathways and neurons are constantly being restructured and renewed, it’s important to keep the associations to your habits positive. It’s not unheard of for people to associate the piano with frustration and obligation, which does lead to many people abandoning the practice. MuseFlow employs elements of gamification specifically to combat this and aid you in solidifying these neural pathways.

Conclusion: How to Use Neuroplasticity to Your Advantage

Your brain is constantly shifting, adapting, growing and evolving, and you can absolutely engage this super power to your benefit! First, choose a skill or task that is challenging and meaningful. Neuroplasticity is more likely to happen with goals that are important to you. Next, focus on it, undividedly.

While I have no doubt that you are a stunning multitasker, it’s important for these pathways that we are building that this new skill has your uninterrupted attention for an amount of time. Then, keep doing that for a prolonged period of time - keep practicing! Finally, adjust. It’s normal and even expected for slip ups to happen. Neuroplasticity does take time.

Don’t get discouraged if a new skill doesn’t immediately take. Simply readjust and keep forming those pathways.

As we speak, the technology of artificial intelligence is making shockwaves in nearly every element of our lives; from dating, to work, to pet care…it can be difficult to get a grip on what exactly it is, and how it can (or can’t) benefit us. We here at MuseFlow saw the potential in AI to revolutionize music education and we have done just that. Keep reading to read more about how AI is revolutionizing music education.

MuseFlow approaches AI as a tool to support our sight-reading first philosophy, so that you can not only play songs you love on our app, but at a party with friends, at a concert or in your living room with a four-legged audience - wherever your musical aspirations take you. AI analyzes your progress and playing style to generate constantly new, progressively structured music. We focus on sight reading to make you an independently proficient player.

MuseFlow is certainly not the first piano app; how many have you downloaded before being met with rote memorization, boring jazz standards and plunky exercises? We combine our expert pedagogical philosophy with a meticulously designed curriculum, supported by AI to implement our approach adapted uniquely to you.

So far we’ve discussed how AI plays a part in the sight reading first philosophy and our adaptive learning approach. That’s just a preview into not only how AI supports our state-of-the-art features, but how we aim to improve the way you study music. Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Why AI?

MuseFlow uses AI in its unique adaptive learning structure, incorporating AI’s capability to accommodate a diverse range of learning styles and tailor instructions to where a learner currently is, whether they’re a beginner or a teacher brushing up on your skills.

As an example: let’s say, as you’re practicing, you’re really struggling with d7 chords but you intuitively pick up complex rhythms. MuseFlow will note that and continuously give you music phrases with that chord included until you’ve mastered it. It’s smoothly incorporated into your individualized practice, all while giving you real-time feedback.

What makes this different from a static method book or a one-size-fits-all curriculum is that MuseFlow’s AI is always listening and learning alongside you. It doesn’t just track right and wrong notes, it recognizes patterns in your playing over time. Maybe you tend to rush through fast passages, or you consistently hesitate before a key change. MuseFlow picks up on those nuances and adjusts your practice material accordingly, creating a feedback loop that keeps you growing without overwhelming you.

This Makes Learning Fun!

When you reach a point where something is perfect for you - not too challenging and not too boring - this is called the flow state. Learning feels effortless and time flies by. Some major elements of achieving flow state are balance between skills and difficulty, immediate feedback, and intrinsic motivation.  

We make it easy to track your progress as you go and maintain control of your education. Practice feels like play. And when practice feels like play, you actually do it, on your own terms. That consistency is what separates the students who stick with piano for life from those who quit after a few months.

A Replacement for Music Teachers?

We prefer to think of MuseFlow as your personal AI tutor. We don’t believe the future of piano education is about replacing the very real human element in music education, but about building on a teacher's presence and giving students a leg up.

While MuseFlow handles the technical instruction, your teacher can carry you forward with the craft and musicianship. When you arrive at your lesson having already internalized the mechanics of a piece, your teacher is freed up to focus on the deeper artistry. Expression, dynamics, storytelling through music. That’s where the magic happens, and MuseFlow helps you get there faster.

We here at MuseFlow are passionate about music education and have worked hard to build an app that is not only revolutionary, unique, and effective, but one that honors the fun that inspired music learning in the first place. If you’re curious to see how AI can help your own journey, click below to try MuseFlow for free.

There are perhaps few things scarier to a musician than focal dystonia. I recently had lunch with a friend who is a professional clarinetist for the San Francisco Ballet, and she mentioned she personally knows about one hundred classically trained musicians who have developed this neurological disorder!

In the sports world this is commonly referred to as the yips, and this disorder affects around 1% of professional musicians across all genres. However, 95% of those cases come from classically trained musicians. Let’s discuss why this happens, and what mitigation efforts you can be put in place so that focal dystonia never presents itself in your performance.

Focal dystonia causes a loss of voluntary motor control in extensively trained movements. The brain develops overlapping neural maps, and musicians can experience cramping, tightness, fatigue, and involuntary muscle contractions. This can make it hard to perform complex instrument movements that musicians have been practicing for years.

Focal dystonia is idiopathic, meaning that “experts can’t point to one factor that causes it.” But some risk factors have been determined. According to Medical Problems of Performing Artists:

• There are higher risks for musicians who play instruments with maximal fine motor skills…like the piano.
• Musicians with anxiety and perfectionist tendencies tend to have higher rates of focal dystonia.
• Genetics is thought to be a contributing factor.
  

Because there’s a strong association between anxiety and perfectionist tendencies and focal dystonia, we should look at the ways piano teaching and training can either contribute to or alleviate those risk factors.

Extreme Repetition

Many traditional teaching systems can encourage students to repeat certain bars and passages over and over again in order to perfect their technical skills and repertoire. But that can actually be detrimental to your fine motor skills.

Extreme, precise repetition can lead your brain to reorganize its neural connections in a process called cortical remapping. This is understood to be a major risk factor for focal dystonia. Variation is important for keeping your neural maps from overlapping.

Perfectionism

The perfectionism that many musicians are taught can directly lead to major risk factors.

• Too much internal monitoring, or being overly detail-oriented and controlling, can mess with the brain’s necessary automatic motor programs.
• Too much practice of isolating and controlling your fingers can lead to co-contraction and a stiff and overly controlled system. This actually hurts fine motor control.
• A mentality of pushing through the pain for the sake of perfection can teach the body not to warn you when it needs to do so.
• Specializing at a young age in a high-pressure environment can shape your nervous system towards narrow movement constraints.
• Perfectionism contributes to anxiety, and both “may be aggravating factors during the development of musician’s dystonia.”
  

What Can We Do?

To avoid these potential risk factors, we need musical education that reduces the repetitive, overly controlled, anxiety-inducing perfectionism that is far too prevalent in classical training. We can do this by:

• Teaching with a wide variety of music rather than hyper-repetition.
• Teaching holistic, whole arm music education rather than isolating and micromanaging your fingers.
• Reducing external pressure and listening to your body when it’s in pain or when motor control is degrading.
  

How MuseFlow Fits In‍

MuseFlow is a piano education program that encourages Flow State and sight reading through constant music variation. The system offers an alternative to the high-pressure classical training that can be healthier for your nervous system and reduce the risk factors associated with focal dystonia.

• Variety: The focus on sight reading means that you’ll be playing songs on first sight. MuseFlow generates an indefinite amount of music so you’ll always have new-to-you pieces to play. This helps your brain build flexible motor programs and strengthen generalizable coordination.
• Flow State: This is antithetical to overthinking and micromanaging. Encouraging a constant state of creative flow with MuseFlow’s gamified system will help reduce the cognitive motor supervision common with musicians with focal dystonia.
• Clear, Attainable Goals: MuseFlow sets clear, attainable goals through incremental learning and continuous music at your skill level. High-pressure perfectionism is replaced by progress-oriented practice  and positive reinforcement to create a more sustainable, low-stress improvement. There’s no incentive to push yourself past your skill level and take on more than your nervous system can handle.
  

Conclusion

If left unchecked, focal dystonia can threaten to derail musicians’ careers. So it’s worth considering how we can reduce the possible risk factors in our music education.

It’s important to note that specific training methods can’t treat focal dystonia or guarantee you won’t develop it. Some people have genetic predispositions and prior injuries that make them more vulnerable to developing the disorder than others. But by focusing your music education around variation, flow, and positive reinforcement, you can support healthier motor learning principles.

And here’s the cool thing about ditching repetitive perfectionism…it can also make learning the piano a lot more fun.

Sometimes, the beginning of the year can bring stress, anxiety, or other emotional hurdles that we don't expect.

Prolonged stress and anxiety can result in respiratory problems, chronic pain, as well as a number of other issues - on top of just being plain unpleasant to deal with.

Studies show that learning to read and play music may improve mood and reduce depression symptoms.

Researchers discovered that subjects experienced relaxation, happiness, and increased tolerance of uncertainty. Novices to experts were given instruments to play and experienced these benefits over relatively short periods.

If you think about it, it makes sense that tolerance of uncertainty is a benefit of playing music. For one, jazz is highly unpredictable and requires a large amount of improvisation. You never know what’s going to come next. There’s a framework, but what’s being played within that framework is completely up to the other musicians you are playing with. Jazz is inherently uncertain.

How does music reverse the effects of aging?

There were also cognitive benefits in addition to improved mental health, including in aging adults and people with mild brain injuries. Increased dexterity and coordination resulted in an increased quality of life for a diverse group of people.

Music is one of those elements, like smell, that triggers memories in a very visceral way, especially when that memory isn’t able to be tapped into any other way. Unity Hospice summarized it well:

"when a dementia patient hears music connected to a memory, they can 're-awaken' and regain the ability to connect with people around them. Sometimes, people who haven't spoken for years find words and actually sing lyrics."

How does music actually improve mental health?

There are actually a few mechanisms through which playing music improves your wellness.

The multi-sensory workout of playing an instrument improves your executive function because the practice builds the corpus callosum, the area of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and problem solving. It’s a thick bundle of nerves that connect the right and left hemispheres and in musicians, it tends to be more developed. Over time, you can see improvement in executive function and even depression.

This is in addition to the feel-good neurochemical cocktail we get from music: dopamine (pleasure and motivation), oxytocin (the bonding hormone), and a significant drop in cortisol (the stress hormone). This naturally combats stress and anxiety.

How does music training actually improve cognition?

Music training requires complex fine motor skills, as well as increased attention and concentration. While studies reveal an increase in processing speed and improved executive function in both healthy and unhealthy individuals, the exact mechanism is still being studied.

Picking up the piano has been shown to improve cognitive function in mild brain injuries as well as mental illness. There is even a dedicated branch of therapy, known as music therapy, combining clinical research with music to address diagnoses.

What’s the difference between music therapy and music education for wellness?

Music therapy is a structured approach to accomplish a patient’s goals by a credentialed professional. It has been proven to help treat and improve a number of conditions from Parkinson’s to childbirth. It is an extremely beneficial approach that many can benefit from, but it is distinct from an ongoing practice for personal wellbeing and fulfillment.

The same mechanisms that make music therapy effective for treating a wide array of conditions are available to you, too.

Building Your Own Wellness Practice

Learning piano is a skill that you can have for life, can help you become more attentive and less stressed, and you can have fun while doing it! You can take advantage of the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits and build a personal wellness practice for yourself.

1. Start Small: I know these benefits are exciting, but there’s no need to dedicate more than 15-20 minutes of focused piano time to begin to see the benefits.
2. Replacement: Choose one habit you’d prefer to replace, such as scrolling social media first thing in the morning, and practice piano instead.
3. Habit stacking: Tack your practice onto another habit, and soon it becomes a reflex. As soon as you wash the dishes or finish walking the dog, sit down at the bench!

Conclusion

Music learning and wellness go hand in hand. If you’re ready to craft a unique, research-backed wellness practice for yourself, try MuseFlow! Our platform is designed not only for you to learn music in the most effective way possible, but to be engaged and motivated while doing it. MuseFlow is tailored to each pianist, allowing you to enter a Flow State; allowing you to increase skill acquisition, and decrease anxiety and boredom.

Optimize your wellness - try MuseFlow for free today.

For a long time, traditional piano grading systems have been the standard for tracking a pianist’s musical progress. But what exactly do those systems track? And are there perhaps some musical elements that slip through the cracks of these longstanding institutions?

What Traditional Grading Systems Do Well

Many pianists around the world judge their progress through traditional grading systems like ABRSM, TCL, and RCM. We’ve talked about these systems at length in a previous blog post.

The exams are great at giving structure to your piano learning. You can use their concrete goals and milestones for motivation and track your progress through their standardized tests. The grades can even open doors in your music career, as these systems are recognized on an international scale.

When you take a traditional exam, you will likely be asked to play polished and memorized pieces, demonstrate technical skills like scales, arpeggios, studies/études, and test your aural abilities.

With their focus in these areas, exams can be a great way to learn how to:

• Perform rehearsed pieces under pressure
• Improve your technical skills
• Give yourself a structured piano routine
  

The traditional system rewards memorization and repetition as you polish your repertoire. But it can be found lacking in teaching musicianship.

What is Musicianship?

Musicianship is literally defined as the “knowledge, skill, and artistic sensitivity in performing music.” More specifically, it’s the art of being a musician. It’s the creative decisions you make when playing a piece. It’s the emotion you infuse into the notes. It’s the holistic music comprehension required to be a musician.

Musicianship involves the following:

• The ability to read music quickly and fluently
• A strong sense of rhythm
• The ability to adapt and improvise
• Creativity in your musical expression
• Confidence in yourself as a musician
  

Exploring and improving your musicianship is the journey of finding and honing your identity as a musician.

What Traditional Grading Systems Can Miss

One academic publication explains that for musical institutions, “teachers spent much of their time teaching technique and repertoire, which many authors suggest is only one aspect of professional musicianship… The focus ideally should be on ‘producing rounded musicians showing a high level of instrumental competence, a depth of musical understanding and a core of personal confidence that will allow them to express themselves with total commitment in any performing area.’”

As we mentioned in our blog about sight reading learning, sight reading only makes up about 10-15% of traditional exams. But sight reading is crucial to musicianship.

• It helps your ability to read, comprehend, and play music quickly.
• It enhances your holistic musical comprehension
• It raises your musical floor…so you need less practice to perfect a new song in your repertoire.
• It boosts your confidence…if you can play more music sight-unseen, you’ll be more confident when encountering songs and musical styles that are new to you.
  

The focus on improving just for the sake of grades can also create some learning gaps. The grades reward big milestone performances rather than steady, consistent learning. And the ability to choose music pieces that play to your strengths can lead to avoidance of developing certain skills.

While these exams do test a lot of elements that are important for musicians, it just doesn’t consider everything that’s needed for well-rounded musicianship.

MuseFlow and Musicianship

We here at MuseFlow believe in giving you the tools you need to build your musicianship.

• MuseFlow’s levels offer continuous, incremental learning. The challenge level and ability to change tempo allows the program to always meet you exactly where you are.
• Sight reading is foundational to MuseFlow, raising your musical floor by teaching you to read, comprehend, and perform new music on first sight.
• MuseFlow’s indefinite, algorithm-generated music and instant feedback encourages you to stay locked into Flow State.
  • One article explains that Flow State is “key to improving performance” and that studies show that “when musicians are in flow, their brains exhibit heightened activity in areas responsible for creativity and motor coordination while suppressing the prefrontal cortex, which controls self-criticism. This explains why performers in flow feel less anxious and play with more confidence.”
    

That focus on sight reading, incremental learning, and Flow State can help you build your musicianship and fill the gaps from traditional exam structures.

Conclusion

The ways we judge a musician’s skill can dictate the priorities of those musicians as they’re working to improve their craft. So while traditional exams can be really helpful tools, it’s also important that we think about the priorities in how we judge musical success and make sure that it includes a comprehensive view of musicianship.

As you go on your musical learning journey, never forget that you’re an artist!

Sight reading is the ability to play a piece on first sight. It’s a unique skill that requires reading, comprehending, and then translating sheet music in an instant. It involves deciphering rhythm, pitch, time pressure, and coordination…all at the same time.

The benefits of learning this skill are endless. As we talked about in our previous blog, sight reading:

• Is important for accompanists and members of orchestras, bands, and choirs
• Expands your repertoire
• Enhances your musical understanding
• Improves your versatility
• Boosts confidence.
• Raises your musical floor
  

A study in the International Journal of Music Education found that while sight reading is important, training is “often neglected,” even among advanced pianists.

But why is that? It may be in part because traditional piano learning systems are largely insufficient at helping you develop, track, and practice the skill.

PIANO GRADING SYSTEMS DON’T PRIORITIZE SIGHT READING

We’ve talked in a prior blog post about the different piano grading systems. Music exam boards like ABRSM and RCM offer these systems to help pianists track their progress, set goals, and offer standardized certifications that musicians can use for college and job applications. While these can be very useful, we’ve found that they just don’t prioritize sight reading.

A major component of these grading systems is preparing, polishing, and performing a number of songs. Learning these songs:

• Expands your repertoire
• Helps teach you the technical skills needed to execute those songs
• Rewards repetition and memorization over real-time music reading
  

In most cases, sight reading is only a small component of the exam. For ABRSM, often seen as the standard for piano grading systems, sight reading makes up about 14% of a typical exam. In fact, across the board, sight reading tends to only occupy about 10-15% of piano grading exams.

But you don’t learn sight reading by polishing your repertoire…you learn it by playing music you’ve never seen before.

EXAMS LACK NUANCE WHEN IT COMES TO SIGHT READING

Within these grading systems, the sight reading component is usually graded on a pass-fail basis. You either succeed at the given level or you don’t. But sight reading is a lot more nuanced than that.

Your sight reading ability exists on a spectrum. You could have advanced skills of reading fluently at tempo but struggle with rhythms. You could move quickly at the keys you know well but freeze at the ones you don’t. It’s a nuanced skill, and your assessments should be similarly nuanced.

BOOKS JUST AREN’T ENOUGH

Just like every other aspect of playing the piano, learning sight reading requires practice. There are books that offer guidance and sheet music specifically for this. That could give you a good start, but you’ll always run into the same problem: running out of sheet music.

Sight reading involves playing a piece of music on your first exposure to it, so you can only really practice and get better if you have a steady stream of new-to-you songs. Sight reading books are finite resources that you’ll eventually read through and no longer have use for.

So if the traditional infrastructure for sight reading:

• Doesn’t prioritize it
• Lacks nuance
• Doesn’t offer enough material to actually practice
  

Then how are you supposed to actually learn it?

ENTER MUSEFLOW

This is where MuseFlow comes in. While most other piano learning systems treat sight reading as a secondary skill, MuseFlow treats it as a trainable system that’s foundational for your musical progress.

Compared to the pass-fail aspect of traditional piano exams, MuseFlow offers an adaptive, incremental approach to learning sight reading and tracking your skill level. When you play MuseFlow’s gamified system, the app gives you real-time feedback on the notes you play. So you’re able to see exactly where and how you can improve at any given level.

MuseFlow also introduces one new idea at a time, and you can change the tempo whenever you want less or more of a challenge. The hyper-specific nature of the program ensures that it’s always meeting you at your skill level and helping you along as you get better.

And perhaps most importantly, MuseFlow’s algorithm-based generative sheet music gives you an indefinite amount of songs. That means there’s no need to worry about running out of new-to-you music to practice your sight reading.‍

CONCLUSION

Sight reading is an essential building block to your musicianship as a pianist. But if learning this skill has ever felt hard for you, that’s totally normal! Traditional learning methods just haven’t been sufficient.

As opposed to traditional systems, MuseFlow:

• Gives a nuanced assessment of your sight reading
• Adapts to your specific skill level
• Offers indefinite music to practice

No matter your age and skill level, you can learn to sight read. All you need are the right tools!