Fingers-on Review: Piano Wizard

When the three piano players in my house (none of them me, all age 14 and under) first started tinkering with Piano Wizard, a computer program that works in tandem with a MIDI keyboard to teach kids how to play piano, they found it confusing. But they agreed that's because they are each a few years away from when they first learned fingerings and notes. After starting with Piano Wizard's beginner lessons, we could see that by taking it step by step, a novice player could learn finger positions, then notes, and become comfortable on a keyboard.

Allegro Rainbow provides a fun way to introduce kids to playing a keyboard without expensive weekly lessons with a piano teacher. Kids can start out by choosing the background they like —such as a dinosaur age landscape, a rock concert—and what they want the moving target on the screen to be. (A pterodactyl egg is pictured.)

The keyboard comes with color-coded stickers to affix to the keys in a pattern and connects to the computer via a USB drive. There are four levels of learning—beginner, intermediate, transition, and advanced. At the beginner level, the dinosaur eggs (or whatever icon you choose) move up from the bottom of the screen. As each hits an onscreen keyboard key, the student must hit the actual keyboard key that corresponds to the color and key on the computer screen. The correct note sounds if the timing and key choice are correct.

Once that level is mastered, kids can advance from colors, to note fingerings, to note names. Then they can try right hand, then left hand, then hands together. From there, the screen can transition from a vertical layout to a horizontal layout, and from colors to actual notes moving across the screen. With each lesson and song played, Piano Wizard keeps track of a student's success rate and then lets her know how well she did by the percentage of notes hit correctly at the end.

There was definitely enough going on to keep my 10 year old interested in playing. There are lots of songs to choose from, and she really liked the "jam" feature that allows you to create your own songs and see the notes, long and short, appear on the screen by name as you play.

But for the $200 Piano Wizard Premier package to be more than an expensive computer game, it will take the same thing that working with a piano teacher requires to learn how to play: practice. And following along in the order that makes the most sense to learn correct finger positions and note names.

At the very least, it's a good way for parents and kids to gauge whether kids want to undertake piano lessons. At most, it's a wonderful, fun approach for kids with an aptitude and a desire to learn to play the piano but who don't have the time and money for years of lessons. If your kids were to emerge from hours of computer games with the ability to play an instrument, that would be a good thing.

If anyone has tried Piano Wizard at home, let us know what you think.