For beginners
Start at the beginning
The first months at the piano are some of the most exciting ones. They are also when you have to set yourself up for success. Quaverley gives a beginner a plan for the days between lessons, and a record that shows the work landing.
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The gap
The lesson ends and the week is a blank page
A beginner leaves a lesson with a great deal to remember and no way to hold it. The teacher said which bars, which hand, which tempo, and by Wednesday the week has become an open evening with a piano in it.
This is the part lessons cannot cover. An hour a week cannot direct six days, and the students who keep going are the ones whose practice produces something visible by the next lesson. A plan names today's work, and a record shows that it happened.
A week
A bar or two, slower than you can play it
A beginner's step is small on purpose. One or two bars, hands separately at first, at a tempo that leaves room to hear what is happening. The metronome counts you in.
When the step is clean it is done, and the record shows the piece filling in. Progress at this stage is measured in bars that no longer need attention, which is easier to see than it is to feel.
Where we stand
A practice companion, not a replacement for teaching
A teacher hears the things software does not: the sound between the notes, the tension in a wrist, the moment a passage stops being understood. That work belongs to a person, and an app that promises to do it for you is selling something other than piano playing.
Quaverley does not teach you to play. It holds the plan between lessons, so the teaching has six days to land.
There is no reward for opening the app. The measure of a beginner's week is whether the bars are cleaner than they were.
Bring the record to your teacher. The lesson then starts from what happened, and the hour goes to playing.
If you have a teacher, Quaverley is built to sit underneath the lessons. If you do not, it gives you a plan and an honest record, and it says plainly what it cannot hear. For teachers explains the same idea from the other side of the desk.
Start here
Pieces that suit a first year
These are the gentlest pieces in the library, each one graded and planned. Among the very first are the Menuet in G and the Bach Prelude in C.
Questions
Before your first lesson, or your first week
Do I need a teacher to use this?
You do not need one to use Quaverley, and it will not pretend to be one. With a teacher, it makes the six days between lessons count. Without one, it gives you a plan and a record, and it is clear about what it cannot hear.
I have never read music.
Reading is not required to begin. Quaverley works in small steps, a bar or two at a time, so you build up skill gradually rather than meeting the whole score at once. The bars and sections are found for you, each step says what to do with them, and reading grows as a side effect of working from the page.
How long until I can play a piece?
The first pieces in the library are short and graded from the very beginning. A beginner can finish the Menuet in G in a few weeks of regular practice, and the record shows the piece filling in as it goes.
Is this one of those apps that promises to teach you in a week?
No. Progress at the piano comes from time and attention, and the app cannot shorten either. Quaverley organises the time. The playing is yours.
What do I need to start?
A piano or keyboard, a phone or tablet, and a few short sessions a week. Fifteen minutes is a real session, and three or four of them will move a piece.
Does the app replace lessons?
No, and it is not trying to. Lessons and the app do different work: the teacher hears and corrects, and Quaverley holds the plan between the lessons. Plenty of beginners use it on their own as well, with the record as the only witness.
Start with the piece you have always wanted to play
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