NoteTrainer

Mastering the piano requires long hours of practice, preferably with a tutor. If you wish to practice at any time, without relying on someone else, NoteTrainer can help you. The application places music sheets in front of you and it allows you to play them on a virtual piano. It provides several methods of exercising your skills, which can be configured without any effort.

NoteTrainer is free and open source. It is compatible with all popular Windows platforms and it doesn't need to be installed. You only need to download an executable file, after which you can run the application right away. It doesn't have any significant impact on a computer's performance and there is no need to install any prerequisite tools.

A musical score is displayed in the largest area of the user interface and you can also find a graphical representation of a piano's keyboard, above the musical score. You may click different options, located on a toolbar, to play the composition or to start practicing. While playing a composition, the application will display a colored bar over the playing notes and it will also highlight their corresponding keys.

When you start practicing, you have to click the piano keys yourself, according to the notes on the musical score. Alternatively, you can use the computer's keyboard for the same purpose. Regardless of which method you choose, the correct and wrong keys will be highlighted differently when pressed. What's more, the application allows you to load your own compositions, if you have them in XML format, so you can practice with familiar music.

You can set up different practicing methods in a tabbed settings menu. NoteTrainer allows you to choose chords, random notes or external compositions as your primary exercise types. Additionally, you can enable one of three playing modes. By default, the application will wait until you press each key, but you can set it to time your key presses or choose to play by tempo, which means that you have to keep up with NoteTrainer, while it plays the composition.

The application allows you to make many other settings. You can set it to generate notes from a specific range, set up different measures and time limits and more. Another useful feature is NoteTrainer's support for MIDI keyboards, which can be configured in the same settings panel.