simply piano vs flowkey, and this video this is by the way a non-sponsored and
totally honest review comparison on simply piano vs
flowkey we're going to go over four very specific things
we're going to go over the layout and the design of each app simply piano and
flowkey just to give you an idea of what's
beyond the curtain really then number two we're going to talk
about the pricing and how much each app costs which app is less
expensive number three and arguably the more
important thing is how do each of the apps teach you how to play
the piano and the fourth thing i'm just going to give you my
honest opinion and review and depending on where you are at as a beginner piano
player whether you might want to go with simply
piano or flowkey you also are looking at some other piano
learning apps i do have some comprehensive reviews
on musician and flowkey and then another simply piano review as well i'll leave
those links in the description so simply piano is
available only on mobile and a tablet device so i have it on my iphone and
ipad here unfortunately they don't have a desktop
version of the app and once you get it downloaded it's a
simple onboarding it's actually quite a nice design of onboarding they ask you a
few questions of what your goals are and where you want to be as a piano
player after a couple questions you can get right into the app and this is what
the app looks like there's a simple navigation on the left
here we have courses and songs so really not hard to get
confused with. under courses it's like a left to right
scroll so you just scroll through your finger and from left
to right and you notice there are different kind of tracks here
we have the piano basics essentials one and then we break into a soloist or
chords track and we'll get into the difference of what a solos and
versus a chords track is when we get into the section of how
simply piano teaches you actually how to play the piano
right now we're more focused on how does the app actually look and
is it nice and whether you can easily get through it and find the things you
want and we can go next to songs and this is just where you can
search for songs or browse through the simply piano songs that they offer
here and start learning songs right away so you can go at the
top here and search for songs or you can also locate songs that are
dependent on the courses section for example let's say you want to learn
imagine by john lennon it says here it requires chord styling
one you should be taking the chord styling one course before learning this
song which is a nice bit of feedback so you can go back to the core section
and locate chord styling course so that's chord styling three
you can go to chord styling one and you can go and take that course and then
you'll be ready to learn the john lennon song so it's a nice little added feature
that simply piano does telling you the prerequisite
courses that you should take before learning songs at the top here we have a
settings section where you can edit your profile
add a profile you can go to a workout section where you can actually do
workouts on the go which i thought was a cool thing to have if you're on the bus
or you're in you know wherever and you don't have
access to an actual piano you can use your iphone and perhaps not
build your technique on the piano but you can at least be practicing what the
notes are and where notes are on the keyboard and then
you can use those transferable skills when you get back to the piano
besides that on the left hand navigation we have a community and then a settings
page and the community is nice if you are into
sharing your results or you want to compete with other people or you want to
leverage other people so you can keep disciplined on your learning
now let's look at what the layout and design looks like in flowkey on
iphone this is what flowkey looks like we have a bottom navigation of songs
search my songs and courses so kind of similar to simply piano the biggest
things are courses on the right and songs on the left
we have quick search here if we want to start learning songs right away and this
is the actual page we're on at the top here we can begin our
intermediate advanced pro put any of those filters on and get
those songs if we are an intermediate we can start learning intermediate songs
right away flowkey is a free app and you can learn as
many free songs as you want and eventually you'll have to pay
for more if you want to learn more advanced songs or
specific songs that might not be available on the free plan the search
section at the bottom is simple you just have
search and then the my songs section is just songs that you've heard before
will be in that my songs the courses section
is similar to the simply piano courses but it's
less linear the courses section in flowkey is more
choose your own adventure it's not a linear structure that simply piano
lays out for you where you should start with essentials one move on to
essentials two and then get onto essentials three and work your
way that way so we have introduction to the piano
playing with both hands intermediate piano playing and you can
go and see what course is right for you so like
simply piano laid it out at the beginning for you until you
know where to start with loki you just if you'd rather go with playing scales
first before jumping into playing with both
hands um maybe you want to do that instead
it's kind of a linear approach where the introduction is at the beginning and
then playing with both hands is next then scale sub intermediate mastering
chords improvising music training playing scales playing
skills too so in a way it is a linear approach but i
found just less linear so if you would like to have
that more choose your own adventure teaching where you just want to go and
choose you don't have to want to be fussed with
a linear approach where you have to do courses before you reach other ones
perhaps flowkey is the better app for you in this case
and so for example if we go to this plain scales 2 or if we want to go to a
more introduction course with let's say
playing with both hands this is what the course would look like
and then you can scroll down and choose any of the classes in the
course so new note values you would go in and you
don't have to take this eighth note course before you take the for example
this half rest course you don't have to do the classes in a linear approach
you can do any one you want at any time so that's what the layout and design
looks like for simply piano and flowkey the fundamentals are based around
songs and courses flowkey being that more choose your own adventure
course and choose the songs you want right away and simply piano being a more
linear approach to doing the right courses in the right order and then
learning the right courses before you actually are learning the songs let's
get on to price and see which app is less expensive so let's start with
simply piano first and take a look at how expensive that is
so simply piano has a family plan version and they also have this premium
access member version where you can either sign up on a monthly basis or
like a three month six month to an annual basis the longer you sign
up with simply piano the cheaper it tends to be but you want to be sure that
you'd like to commit before paying that fee because you're
not paying on a monthly level if you want that annual discount you have to
pay that upfront and then you can use it for a year so
the family plan at three months is 107.99
the family plan at one year is 194.99 then there's the premium
access plan at three months six months and one year each respectively at 71.99
101.99 and 129.99 so that's the simply piano pricing but
also they do have a full premium access member seven day
trial so sign up with that no hassle try it out
for seven days for free but remember if you're not going to
go with it make sure you cancel within that seven
days or else you will be charged that full amount for a year
afterwards let's move on to flowkey and see how expensive flow key is
with flowkey you can also pay on a monthly level or annual level they also have a
lifetime package you can buy so if you want to purchase flowkey and
get billed every month it's 20 per month if you want to go at that
three month package you can get that drop down to 12.99 a month
and then if you want to go to the 12-month package it gets dropped down to
about 10 a month they do also have this lifetime
package where if you are truly set on flowkey and you
know that you want to be with them forever and you're going to learn the
piano forever then you can go with their lifetime package and just
get flowkey outright and never have to pay them again let's move on now to arguably
the most important section of the video which is
looking at how simply piano and flowkey teach you how to play the piano
based on how they teach you how to play a song and how they teach you how to
build your technique let's start with simply piano so the
great thing about simply piano is that it not only is it simple but
their courses and songs section are not really dependent on each other but
they're not mutually exclusive either they recommend though that you do
take courses before you learn songs most other piano learning apps like flowkey
they separate songs and courses and they're not
connected in any way for example when you're learning a
course in flowkey or when you're learning a song in flowkey
they won't say hey you should probably take introduction to piano before
learning the song there's none of that so this is what it looks like in simply
piano when you click into the course section
you'll again have this left to right scroll view where you'll see the
different classes or section in the course the
grayed out ones are the ones you obviously haven't taken yet
and so when you click into a course this is what it looks like
again a different view of specific sections within that section
and then once we click and again we'll get the view of actually how it teaches
you how to play the piano very very simple and i think that's why
it's called simply piano there's not a lot
to get confused with there is a really simple navigation at the top with play
button restart navigation and then there's this
ear which you can press if you don't know what the notes sound like on
the sheet music or you forgot what it is you can press that and we'll
it will play the note for you that's all there is in simply piano
there's no ability in the course mode section
design here to lower the tempo to set a metronome to
take off the backing track to just do left or right hand but if you're looking
for those more advanced settings or features you're not going to
get that with simply piano inside their design when it comes to
courses so how does it teach you actually how to play the piano right
well you would press the play button and then you would have to start playing the
piano if you don't know where those notes are
on the keyboard because there's no color coordination with
the notes on the sheet music and the notes on your actual keyboard
you'd want to always watch the videos in advance to the course section because
there's video snippets of where the notes are on the keyboard
and they teach you how to play it so if we take a look now what it's like to
learn a song on simply piano it is a bit different
you can choose between two parts you don't have to go into playing the full
song right away you can go to part one or part two or if
you'd like get into learning the full song right away
so this is what part one looks like similar kind of interface of what the
course section was but you can do a couple different
things you can lower the tempo down to 60
or eighty percent but only up to one hundred percent um with floki you can do
a fifty percent and seventy five percent tempo change
with other piano learning apps like usion you can do any
tempo change you want i think tempo change is very important when you're
learning the piano because you want to be able to
adjust the speed that is personally right for you
and at the slowest that you can play it at the best possible and sometimes
60 might be too fast for you you want it at 50
or 40 unfortunately in this case you can't lower the tempo
but besides the tempo change simply piano doesn't do
really anything else other than that we'll press play and we can always be
scrolling through the sheet music and going to the certain sections of the
song that we want to play i didn't think i didn't really like
about simply piano was it didn't give you the option if you wanted just to
focus on the chorus you didn't have the option to scroll to
the chorus and then just have that loop so you can
really just narrow in on the course you would always have to be
scrolling back and forth another couple things i didn't like when simply piano
was teaching me how to play this song or i was learning how to play it was i
wasn't able to put a metronome or click on to know
what the timing was there is a backing track which is nice to play along and be
accompanied by but i also didn't have the option to turn
off this backing track just listen to the click so i could really focus on my
piano playing it also would be cool if i was able to
isolate left and right hands when you're learning a difficult song
and you don't aren't ready to play left and right together sometimes you
just want to hear what's in the right hand or
just want to hear what's in the bass clef and you don't have the option to
turn on or off bass or treble you have to be
listening to both at the same time or at least having both of those notes show up
at the same time and so i wish that that was a feature
that you could isolate both those tracks probably they don't have all these
things because their name is simply piano and they want to keep it
simple and that's fair it is a very simple app
but because of that they don't have these added features and settings that i
wish they would have so if you're the type of person which likes
bare bones simplicity then simply piano is right for you take
a look at how flowkey teaches you with respect to courses and learning
songs so this is the introduction to piano course
and it's nice that flowkey does give you that feedback right away where it tells
you how you should sit at the piano and what
your posture should be like because these are very important things to
learning the piano so this is what the learning interface
looks like in flowkey and again it's nice landscape view
similar to simply piano though the piano is on top and the sheet music on the
bottom and not really colorful right it's it's
more i think adult like i did find simply piano to be a
little more childlike so if you are a child that might be
better for you if you are an adult loki has that more standard professional
vibe where the sheet music actually looks like sheet music and it's not
purple like it is in simply piano big feature about flowkey which none of the
other piano learning apps have which is this weight mode feature and
what that means is the sheet music won't continue
being played until you actually play the notes that the cursor is
on a lot of other piano learning apps have the sheet music run continually
and so if you can't catch up then you're just gonna get behind but with flowkey
it won't move on until it actually hears those notes which can be great if you're
learning a difficult song or a difficult part another cool thing inside flowkey
when you're doing an exercise they will actually
help you focus in on one section and not play the whole
song so for example this is me learning the simple song oh to joy
and you can see when i press play it highlighted this little blue section so
i'm going to have to play that on repeat and it's in weight mode so it won't
actually start the sheet music and this demo player
playing until i actually play those notes as well which is great because
then you can focus in on that intro part to the song whereas in simply
piano you couldn't isolate those sections so i i do find
that really valuable when you're learning how to play the piano is the
ability to isolate sections now let's take a look at
learning how to play a song on flowkey and how does it teach you
how to play a song so let's pretend we're learning claire de lune because
that's a really great song and it happens to be free as
well so we can click in and get a preview of the song just
so we remember that we like it and then we can press in and learn the song
so this is what the learning interface looks like and a lot of different things
going on compared to how they were teaching you in the courses section
so we have different things at the top here we have this kind of a speed meter
the left and right hand and then the settings so left and right hand is
really valuable because here is where you can isolate
do you want the person to be playing both hands or do you want to isolate one
hand at a time and this is really valuable
when you're learning difficult parts because you just sometimes need to focus
on the right hand and really get that well
also the left hand before you bring them together the speed meter is very helpful
and here's where you can turn on or off weight mode which i was
mentioning before and you can also lower the speed to 50 or 75
or the original tempo so similar to simply piano in a way
theirs was 60 and 80 percent here it's 50 and 75 percent
no where else so i do prefer like musician where you actually could do it
anywhere you want um in this case you only have 50 75
here's the really valuable thing with flowkey when you're learning piano it's
this weight mode tied to their cycle option
so you can press the cycle option in the middle and then you can scroll
into the sheet music where you want this song to be
cycled so if you really want to focus on bars eight let's say bars four to eight
and i really actually only want to hear the right hand to focus first
at a speed of 50 percent and i'm going to turn on weight mode
so now i can go to my piano i know it's going to be at a slow speed i know it's
going to be waiting for me before those notes
actually continue in the sheet music and it's only going to be playing the right
hand so i can really take my time learning that song and i know
when it gets to bar eight it's going to go back to bar
four you want to be playing slow and steady in time
repeated the same part over and over again until you really
know that part with simply piano it really was start to finish
back and forth and i never found that i could able
to get in the zone on a specific part so i really
much prefer the way flowkey teaches you how to play the piano versus
simply piano with that said though a couple things with weight mode which i
don't really like i think it's great if you're learning difficult parts but
where weight mode can steer you wrong i think and another thing i
don't like about flowkey is they also don't give you a metronome so you
don't know if you're playing in time especially in wait mode
weight mode just waits for you so you can be pressing a note
and literally going to have a conversation and then pressing the same
note when you're learning how to play the
piano having the rhythm is a vital part to learning the song
so sometimes you need to have weight mode on to get that
muscle memory but then you need to take it off and be playing with a metronome
so you know that your rhythm is in time you don't have the ability to
turn on a metronome and so that's a really vital part that i think flowkey and
simply piano are missing so there are big differences
when it comes to simply piano vs flowkey and how they teach you
songs and their course structure layout really depends on where you are as a
beginner player and what your goals are because both
could be could be right for you so for the last
section what i think is right for you i think if you are a beginner like
beginner beginner piano player you've never
touched the piano before you've only gone out and bought your first keyboard
now you have no experience whatsoever you might start with simply piano
because it is so simple and just will give you that kind
of it will get your feet wet with touching
the piano and actually learning how to play some
of your favorite songs now if you're the piano player where you've
learned piano as a child but then you've given it up over 10
20 years and now you want to learn it again maybe flowkey is better for you
because you can do your own course guided
learning and then learn the songs with the valuable features they have like
weight mode and cycle mode i do play piano and i'm a full-time
singer-songwriter musician and i have all my music online so if
you're curious to hear what i sound like i'll leave a couple
links to my music in the description please feel free to subscribe to this
video and if you like it give it a thumbs up it does help with the youtube
algorithm and i hope to see you in the next video.