If you are like most other Piano Street visitors, you regularly listen to and enjoy piano music on YouTube or music streaming services like Spotify or Naxos Music Library. Compared to the era of LPs or CDs, the sheer amount of recordings we have instant access to today is completely overwhelming.
Are you also getting distracted when listening to music on YT?
Blessing or curse?
While this is mostly a blessing for everyone who loves music, it can also be confusing. Sites like YouTube are not exactly designed to promote concentrated listening. How often do you listen to a complete Beethoven Sonata without being distracted? Many of us often end up just skipping around, in the vague hope of finding something even better or more interesting.
An idea was born…
So two years ago, with 2800 piano pieces in the online sheet music library, we got the brilliant but crazy idea to create a tool which could give you easy “one-click” access to the best videos and streaming audio tracks while following along in the scores. This seemed to us like the perfect way of helping members find their own way through the vast richness of the piano repertoire.
Since then the Piano Street Team has been hard at work: 1200 man hours of listening and hand picking the greatest among the many great performers playing the greatest piano music is tough work. But we have persisted. We have not complained. And here we are, now even more convinced of the amazing possibilities the Internet has to offer and – not least – with a new update of Piano Street’s unique AST.
See it in action (2 min. demo):
The Audiovisual Study Tool (AST) allows you to:
- Learn piano pieces faster
- Improve your interpretational skills
- Broaden your repertoire knowledge
- Improve your sight reading
- Effortlessly enjoy the great art of classical piano music
In the new version 1400+ pieces by eleven of the most popular piano composers are included, the user experience and navigation have been greatly improved and iPad is now supported.
The AST feature is now available for unlimited use for Gold members. Welcome to sign up or upgrade for instant access!
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/nilsjohan
December 17th, 2013 at 17:12
Looks great. Takes a lot of effort to find good recordings on youtube so this is relly helpful. Thanks Piano Street Team!
December 17th, 2013 at 18:17
The AST has been very useful for me and with this update I see the navigation is much improved. It is easy to find all other pieces by the same composer which was difficult in the previous version.
December 17th, 2013 at 19:37
Am I doing something wrong or am I just gullible? I was really expecting the AST to navigate through the sheet music, as is done in the demo. I think I could do as well with a book of music and Youtube.
December 17th, 2013 at 21:07
I am very impressed. A tremendous idea put into reality.
December 18th, 2013 at 13:26
I agree with Mary. Need a score reader.
December 18th, 2013 at 18:40
From the overview, it looks as if there is not a start/stop function, or a way skip to different parts of the music for the non-youtube recordings. I think that would get really annoying.
December 20th, 2013 at 19:15
Hi ,can one scroll the music now using a ipad .Tried it before it wouldn’t work
December 20th, 2013 at 23:25
I could not get the cursor to follow the music?
December 21st, 2013 at 17:00
The unimagineable made possible. I love AST
December 21st, 2013 at 18:27
AST is very exciting and a new concept to me. I liked the demo and have had a few minutes on the AST system. I liked that even more.
December 22nd, 2013 at 7:56
The AST was what pulled me back to Piano Street after leaving. But it needs to grow and develop. I listen to mostly Bach, and I love Rosalyn Tureck, so I have to go to Spotify which frankly I find extremely annoying. All of a sudden you get a loud and very obnoxious advertisement that is a complete turn-off. I realize its free, but I’m just not willing to endure the ads, even if it is free. I wouldn’t mind paying for it, but the ads are just plain awful. So that limits my use of AST, though you do have other good pianists too. Richter and others.
December 22nd, 2013 at 18:41
Many thanks for your feedback!
Mary & Melissa,
AST is intended for users with at least a decent ability to read music and our testing has showed that a cursor or marker following the music note for note is not optimal for pedagogical and artistic reasons. It is however possible that pieces on beginner level could benefit from this feature and we will consider it for a future update.
Daren,
Yes, the new version works also on iPad.
Jared,
The demo video does not show the whole desktop. Spotify and Naxos players are opened as separate windows and can be placed below or next to the AST window for easy start/stop/skip functionality.
In pieces with several parts or movements, such as sonatas, variations and suites, both audio/video and score skip automatically to the start of the section when clicking a section name or track.
David,
Considering the possibility to access such an amount of high quality recordings for free, Spotify’s ads can be a reasonable compromise for occasional listening. We do however recommend their ad-free “Unlimted” plan for optimal use of the AST.
December 23rd, 2013 at 2:00
Thank you for the great initiative you have created with the new AST. It is now so easy to study a score and select a favourite performer to interpret the music, viewing and listening simultaneously on the same screen. I’ll make good use of this tool in the months to come.
January 14th, 2014 at 16:53
This is great! Thank you!!!