Can the game-style approach and novel graphics of this software piano tutoring system really help you play with more than two fingers? John Cleary finds out...

Modern keyboard synths are great, but unless you're a trained pianist, you can find yourself lamenting your lack of keyboard technique and suspecting that a bit of formal training would do wonders for your musical versatility. Lessons are a big help, but not everyone has the time, money or inclination to seek out a decent piano teacher and engage in what could be a long course of tuition. And some of us, of course, would prefer to make our stupid mistakes in the privacy of our own homes!

This is where the Miracle Piano Teaching System comes in. It offers a package which you can hook up to your home computer for "hours of musical fun while you learn". After six to 12 months, the "average beginner" should be able to play with two hands, read music, perform in a music group and be capable of making further progress alone. This is an appealing prospect for anyone with musical interests and there would seem to be a vast potential market for an effective teach-yourself scheme.

Miracle kits come in one box, containing a keyboard, leads, power supply, software disks and manuals. A Macintosh computer was used for this review but the system is also available in PC, Amiga and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) formats. Learning is accomplished in small lesson steps, each covering one aspect of the music studied. These lessons are grouped into graded Chapters; your objective is to learn one specific tune within each Chapter, although other music may also be encountered during this process.

Each lesson requires you to master certain skills before passing on to the next lesson. Basic pitch and rhythm skills are introduced first, and these are reinforced and expanded as more advanced work is attempted. Some useful information is given within the program, and further help is available in the well-written manuals; there's some particularly thoughtful advice on how to seek out more advanced instruction if you want it.

MIRACLE MUSIC CONSERVATORY

Your learning takes place in the Miracle Music Conservatory — an impressive graphic environment encountered in the main page display. From this central area, you can enter six different 'Rooms'. These are Administration, Classroom, Practice Room, Arcade, Recording Studio and Concert Hall. Different learning tasks are performed in each room throughout the course:

• ADMINISTRATION: this is the area where you register personal details, though there is a 'browse' option for the casual user. Achievement statistics are stored here and used to generate screen messages and print out progress certificates. This room can be visited by the user at any time to provide a visual record and analysis of progress, and the system can cope easily with multiple users.

• CLASSROOM: learning is introduced in this section, which is appropriately equipped with its own Chalkboard. Chapters and lessons are selected here and most instructions concerning demonstrations, practice and the occasional pop quiz are chalked up on the board in traditional style. Practice routines are designed to isolate and address individual topics such as note-reading, rhythm, piano fingering and so on. The program design incorporates an error tracking system which can identify 200 types of player error, sorted into 41 main categories. Data from this process is used to select exercises to tackle the "most significant error" at each stage. Thus, if ignoring rests is the main problem, the program will generate games and exercises to develop and test the necessary expertise.

• PRACTICE ROOM: this is the area where the skills required in each lesson can be systematically developed. Lesson material can be reviewed in detail and a selection of icons offer several different learning strategies. Press 'Demo' and you will hear the tune played; 'Solo' allows you individual practice with the metronome; 'Duet' gives the choice of playing right or left hand, with Miracle supplying the other hand. You can also choose to practise 'notes only' at your own pace, or 'rhythm only' which demands rhythmic accuracy at a tempo you select. Extra tunes are also available here at the same level of difficulty as your main study piece.

• ARCADE: the Arcade contains a menu of practise games to encourage and reinforce keyboard and music skills. Ducks is a note reading game, Ripchord is for chord practice and Aliens is a game for rehearsing and memorising note and finger sequences. Suitable menu options allow the level of difficulty to be selected. A Jukebox feature is also provided which will play any Miracle song, complete with orchestral accompaniment.

• PERFORMANCE HALL: when the Miracle program feels you have reached the necessary standard, you can go to the Performance Hall to play your tune in concert with the Miracle Orchestra.

• STUDIO: alternatively, you could visit the Studio and record your performance of any Miracle tune or your own original work. The studio has a multitrack facility of seven individual tracks, plus metronome on track eight. Tracks may be recorded one at a time and different keyboard voices can be assigned. The screen displays the usual tape transport graphics, which are easy to operate, and a track mute facility is included. Songs can be saved and deleted within the program but cannot be transmitted to other MIDI devices.

WORKING WITH THE MIRACLE

In use, the program's high quality graphics have an immediate impact. This feature, plus the reasonable sound quality of the keyboard (see box), provides a comfortable and stimulating learning environment. All functions are easy to operate using standard mouse actions on screen and via Menu bars. Various Help features offer extra information and, in addition, some keywords in the text are highlighted. Clicking on these allows you to skip to a Glossary section which explains the topic in detail — an absolute beginner need never feel swamped by musical jargon.

On a purely personal level I found the Miracle 'theme tune' which happens on power-up soon became irritating and there's no way to terminate it. In a program seeking to encourage daily use, this delay could be a demotivating factor. Similarly the program can seem painfully slow in response when moving between screens during a learning task, possibly due to the need to access the computer hard drive. This tends to be more noticeable simply because the screen text flows smoothly and transmits information very well. I don't know whether things might be better on a more expensive Mac — I used a standard LCII.

In many respects, the system mimics the approach of a human tutor quite realistically. It is encouraging and forgiving during early lessons when many learners are at their most fragile, and yet becomes more critical and demanding in the later stages. The error analysis is also reminiscent of teacher strategies in setting special exercises to combat problems. On-screen evaluations are supportive and helpful and state clearly the extent to which lesson objectives have been achieved. I felt the screen representation of the metronome click above the notation was particularly effective. This demonstrates visually what is required for rhythmic playing and is a good way of teaching a concept which some learners find very awkward.

Generally, the program seems capable of teaching piano and notation skills, especially to well-motivated adults, though some may find the 'middle America' nature of much of the music a little wearing. A few of the orchestral arrangements are a trifle odd (to be kind), and younger users may also need a lot of supervision and more motivation than the program alone can provide when things get tough.

On a technical level, the system did not pick up well on 'split' (arpeggiated) chords and small timing mistakes between the hands. It also seems to find a variety of simultaneous gross errors difficult to handle (as do teachers). The Miracle system can develop technique up to a point, though left hand progress will be modest, and it sets good standards in many areas. Aside from those learning an instrument for the first time, Miracle could have a particularly strong appeal for those who already play an instrument but who feel that a more confident keyboard technique would help them better exploit the possibilities of their existing MIDI setup.

Further Information

Miracle Piano Teaching System, £299 Amiga and IBM; £349 Apple Mac; £249 NES. Prices include VAT.

Mindscape International Ltd, (Contact Details).

For £599, Mindscape International bundle Yamaha's Hello Music! System (consisting of a General MIDI tone module based on the TG100, Steinberg's Cubase Lite sequencer and Music Box MIDI File playback program, song disk containing 20 popular songs and necessary cables) with the Miracle Piano Teaching System. It's available for Mac or PC running Windows, and if you buy the PC version, Windows drivers are supplied. The idea is that you learn keyboard skills and then move onto basic sequencing without having to change anything. Call Mindscape for more info on this good value package, called Pro Miracle. Hello Music! (just the module, software, songs and cables) is available without the Miracle additions for £399. Call the Yamaha Product information line on (Contact Details) for more info on Hello Music!