Piano Hero: Fun but not practical for taking piano lesson

I tried out Piano Hero today. If you play the dance station at PS2 before, you will be familiar with Piano Hero. There are only 4 pads on the dance pad – front, back, left and right. But on the piano, you guess how many keys are there? 88 keys! How are you going to learn to play the piano just by trying to strike the keys whenever the color “blocks” fell on it? I really doubt that it will teach any beginner to play the piano.

However, I still find it fun to watch :). I tried it out with some of my own compositions. You can practically load any MIDI files with Piano Hero.

Here are some features of Piano Hero which are useful:

1. You can load any MIDI files – 16 tracks maximum. Some MIDI files contain drum and percussion track and other accompaniment.

2. You can mute the track you want to practise. You try to play the track just by following the falling blocks.

3. Some of the tracks can be hidden but still plays.

4. Tempo is flexibly adjustable by percentage. You can always start practising with slower tempo.

5. The greatest feature is that Piano Hero is free!!

Have fun with it. It doens’t work as a tutor to me, but maybe it will help you.