Noctave: Learn Piano

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In-app purchases

About this app

Noctave turns every piece into notes of light falling toward your keyboard. Play them as they reach the line, then the real sheet music gradually takes over. A rhythm game and a teacher at once, from your very first notes to virtuoso pieces. One day, you're reading the score without noticing.

From light to sheet music
• Follow the light: notes fall toward the keys, cyan for the right hand, violet for the left.
• Watch the score: it scrolls above, in sync, and every note you play lights up on it.
• Read on your own: in Learning mode, the falling notes fade as you play correctly, then the “Score” view keeps only the sheet music.
• Night or Paper: light notation on the night sky, or black on a cream-coloured page.

A journey through the constellations
• 171 levels in a tree: the trunk teaches you both clefs, then you choose your constellations, one per style (studies, great tunes, Romantics, ragtime, sonatas…), up to Polaris and the final boss, Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu.
• Perfect, Good, OK: every right note bursts into light and your combo climbs up to ×4.
• Three stars and a record to beat on every level.

To work on a piece
• Wait mode, tempo from 25 to 150%, loop tricky measures, hands separately, metronome.
• Written and suggested fingerings, note names in C D E or Do Re Mi.

The Recital
Play a piece as if on stage, with a MIDI keyboard: the music follows your playing, rubato and all. It waits while you breathe, no wrong note stops it, and it finds you again if you play a phrase over. At the end, a summary in a musician's words, no score, and a replay of your performance, dynamics and pedal included. Share it with a link: a page plays it back in falling notes.

Note reading
A note appears on the staff, you play it. Fourteen steps, from middle C to every key signature, in both clefs.

Your piano, just as it is
• Digital piano or MIDI keyboard over USB (OTG cable) or Bluetooth MIDI, or simply the touch screen.
• A piano without a cable? The microphone recognizes your notes, and “Double-check each note” makes sure of each one. Listening stays on your device: nothing is recorded or sent.
• Latency calibrated in a few taps; Noctave's sound mutes itself when your piano has its own.
• Small keyboards from 25 to 76 keys: every level has an adapted version.

175 public-domain pieces
• The Essentials: 55 great piano pieces, from Für Elise to Debussy's Clair de lune, first in an easy version, then for real.
• The Great Tunes: 45 orchestral, opera and concerto melodies, from the Ode to Joy to the whole Rhapsody in Blue.
• All 21 of Chopin's Nocturnes and all eight of Schubert's Impromptus, in full.
• Virtuoso pieces, up to the Master level: La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, the Flight of the Bumblebee…
• And also Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Grieg, Joplin…
• And your own pieces: import a MIDI or MusicXML file or, with Noctave Plus, take a photo of printed sheet music (scanning in beta).

Free, and Noctave Plus
The trunk of the journey (30 levels), the first level of each of the four constellations of the first sky, Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 and the easy versions of the Essentials and the Great Tunes are free, forever, with every aid, the score, the Recital, MIDI keyboards, the microphone, listening to every piece and three imports. Noctave Plus unlocks everything else with a single in-app purchase, no subscription: the nine constellations up to the Fantaisie-Impromptu, the whole catalog, unlimited imports, score scanning, the correction editor and the complete note reading course.

Your privacy
No ads, no trackers. Playing, learning, importing and progressing work offline, without an account. An optional account syncs your progress across all your devices.

Designed for a tablet on the music stand, in landscape; Noctave also works on phones.

What’s new

• The Recital: play a piece as if on stage, with a MIDI keyboard. The music follows your playing, rubato and all, and waits while you breathe. At the end, a summary in a musician's words and a replay of your performance.
• Share what you play: a link to a page that plays it back in falling notes, with Noctave's piano.
• Adding notes that belong to the music? The summary says so, without counting them as slips.
Enjoy the music!