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| Piano Suite Premier 2.6 | 
 enlarge | From: Adventus Incorporated
Category: Software
Buy New: $74.99
Buy New from $74.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (8 reviews)
Sales Rank: 2636
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 95
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
MPN: ADV00111EF-0807-0082
UPC: 628370100375
EAN: 0628370100375
ASIN: B00007BGNS
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Piano Suite is your best option for learning to play piano no matter what your age | | • | With a full compliment of customizable and expandable tools Piano Suite will guide you into the rewarding world of making your own music | | • | Piano Player will help you through the learning process with the help of an interactive voice tutor and provide continuous feedback on your play until you master the piece | | • | Personal and musical biographies of over 150 composers and performers will enrich your learning experience | | • | Challenging interactive games sharpen your piano playing skills and develop theory comprehension |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Learn to play the Piano The learning library contains 400+ musical pieces covering - Classical, Jazz / Blues, Religious, Country, Pop / Rock, Children's Folk / Traditional, Christmas and National Anthems. With Piano Suite Premier you can record your own music, display and print the musical notation and add your own composition along with a favorite photo to the Learning Library repertoire
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Good for adults too July 26, 2008
I'm an adult learner, determined that *this* time I'm going to get past the "right hand or left hand, but not both at the same time" stage. This has been a great program for doing that. You can take it at your own pace, and repeat exercises over and over again, going back to them to refresh. You can do the exercises in either "Wait for the Note" or "Notes and Timing" modes (there's also a mode called "Rhythm" that I haven't figured out yet). "Wait for the Note" helps you learn finger placement and note location; then you move on to "Notes and Timing" when you play what you've learned to the beat of the dreaded metronome. The program gives you a score each time you play a piece and lets you know what bars you need to work on. There are also a few games to relieve some of the necessary tedium of learning the notes.
I'm taking one star off for a problem mentioned by another reviewer -- the program doesn't remember your preferences. If you have a good computer screen and can use the smaller notes, you have to tell it every time. The metronome is even worse -- not only do you have to set it for every exercise, but if you push one of the other settings and then come back to the exercise, the metronome has to be reset. This is very annoying.
The program is challenging, to a point. There are lots of exercises for each lesson, so you don't go bonkers playing Ode to Joy over and over again. However, the lessons stop after a very truncated section on chords. Perhaps this is because there's no way to learn chords other than to practice them, but a little more instruction and guidance would have been appreciated. On the other hand, there are many song choices in the Piano Player section that use chords, so that's good.
I'd definitely recommend this software for adult learners as well as children.
 Excellent Full-Featured Piano Software for All Ages November 1, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This program accepts any size MIDI keyboard, up to a full-size 88-key one. The installation program automatically downloads any available updates from the Internet, so you should have no problem getting it installed. The requirements say Windows 95 to XP, but I have Vista 64-bit and it runs fine. Piano Suite starts off slow, has you play a song, then recommends other songs to play, based on your current skill level and/or what you need to work on. You will learn how to play many popular songs, including ones by The Beatles, Elvis, and Frank Sinatra. Many songs have multiple skill levels, so you can start playing the song at say Level 3, then work your way up to Level 5 (which has more notes and is harder to play). In my opinion, the best feature is the "MIDI Song Input", where you can download a MIDI file from the Internet or elsewhere and learn how to play it in the program. Piano Suite Premiere includes 500 songs. This program is also very customizable -- you can adjust the size of the music notes, the speed of the metronome, practice a song with left hand only, right hand only, or both hands, and select any song you want to play within the song list. You start off with the "Theory Thinker," which gradually teaches you how to play the piano with harder and harder components (triplets, arpeggios, different time signatures, etc). The program even remembers where you left off, so all you have to do is click a button to continue. Last, but not least, the program also includes games to help you become a better piano player, biographies of composers, progress reports for multiple users, and the ability to record your own songs from your MIDI keyboard.
Very happy and learning fast! August 13, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This software is excellent. The feature that really got me interested is the ability to load MIDI files from the internet into the program and then be able to actually see the score and play it with the features of this program (ability to slow tempo, mark parts of the score for practice, show right hand only, left hand only, both, evaluate your errors).
You can play along with the song and use a metronome , I find it very helpful. The lessons that come with the software are fingered, the ones you load from the internet won't show any fingering.
Every song-lesson comes set up (when you play it, to hear the song before you start to practice) with different instruments, but you can change this settings. You have 3 note sizes, great.
Every time you use this program you have to use the keyboard tunning tool, I guess it's a downer, but takes 1 minute. Don't forget to set your monitor at a low resolution. If you don't do this, the program will show up in a small window.
The classical library is pretty good for the begginer and I would say the intermediate. It includes contemporary music too (rock).
The lessons are very simple , to the point, you can practice as much as you want. The games are fine too, there are staff lessons which I find more helpful than the games, like "find this note and put it on the staff" where you use the computer mouse to do so, not the keyboard, even though you don't use the piano it's good practice, I'm doing much better reading music now thanks to this.
I had no problems at all with installation, I use my laptop Dell, I read all the manual and everything went smooth. I would highly recommend to follow-instructions. I don't know why other people had some problems. My midi connection is Edirol UM-1EX, I already had it installed and used it with another piano software. I am very happy with this, having used other options I am really glad I bought this one!!
 A good way to learn October 10, 2005
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
This software does pretty much what it claims. It's neither clearly better nor clearly worse than the alternatives. Here are some specific notes which might be helpful to you:
* It's trapped in an un-resizeable DOS window. To get full-screen, you have to alter your monitor settings.
* You can use your QWERTY keyboard to play notes, but you have to reactivate a special window everytime you click elsewhere. Therefor, this feature is useful only for testing the software w/o a MIDI keyboard connected.
* There are about a dozen MIDI songs which you can upload to your MIDI keyboard (if your keyboard allows this). The rest of the songs are integrated into the program -- ie, not copyable.
* Contrary to the advertising, there are no REM songs. There is "Superman", which REM covered but did not write. (Good song though.)
* If you press "next" too early, you do not get credit for having viewed a lesson. This is good for a classroom, but annoying to me.
* I have gotten weird errors from the Music Recorder, but I didn't buy it for that anyway.
I bought Piano Suite 1 & 2, which is much cheaper. It contains only 80 songs and lacks the Composer (which also prints sheet music). For me it is a much better value than the Premier edition. It has all the lessons, the games, and the same basic player.
Piano Suite Premier September 26, 2005
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Have a bug inside the program ver. 2.6!!!
eg. 1) can't locate existing library's files
2) In composer's corner, can't delete the song from public library.
But still a very good program for piano beginner.
I will wait & see the improvement in next patch.
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