Rocket Piano Software

Rocket Piano is a well designed piano software package. It claims to be a complete piano course that provides a year's worth of piano lessons and, fortunately, it does live up to this claim. The course is entirely computer based and all the material is downloaded from the Rocket Piano members website. Put simply, one signs up for the course and is given lifetime access to the member's website where all the course contents reside.

You can use the materials as often as you like and at your own pace. Furthermore, all future updates and added materials are available to members as well. The Rocket Piano course is also offered as a physical product in DVD and book form, but at a much higher price tag. However, the two versions of the course are exactly the same, so the digital version would seem to be the obvious choice.

About the instructor

Rocket Piano was designed and written by Australian pianist Ruth Searle. Her teaching style is very engaging and upbeat, which enlivens the lessons and dispells the tediousness that many piano students encounter when taking lessons. Ruth Searle is a classically trained pianist to the ABRSM Grade 8 level. While classical piano is her forte Ruth also has a great deal of experience playing and performing Jazz, Pop, Blues, Rock, and Gospel piano. She holds a degree in Media Arts with a major in Commercial Music. Ruth has also been awarded the Australasian Award for Composition.

Course Content

The heart of the Rocket Piano software course is contained within 3 ebooks (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and a collection of 57 videos and over 248 audio files. The ebooks are in pdf format and each provides a few hundred pages of lesson material. Throughout the ebooks there are references to assoicated video and audio files, which serve to provide complete demonstrations of the specific topic or lesson. There are also several supplementary ebooks, which are an important part of the course.

The Lesson Books

• The beginner lesson book assumes no prior knowledge of the piano. It begins with an introduction to the history of the piano and how it works. A full orientation of the instrument is provided as well as the layout and names of the keys. After this the beginner book covers the basics of proper posture and hand positioning, as well as playing scales, chords, and arpeggios. Also, an initial foray into music theory teaches the student about the three fundamental concepts in all music - melody, harmony, and rhythm.
• Building on the knowledge learned in the beginner book the intermediate book introduces the student to reading music. This includes knowledge of key and time signatures as well as the two elements that lend most of the emotion and mood to music - dynamics and performance style. Expansion upon the topics of melody, harmony, and rhythm is provided. The student will also learn to build and play more complex chords and rhythms, providing him/her with the ability to play music in various styles (jazz, gospel, etc.)
• The advanced book combines what you've learned from the previous ebooks and gets you thinking as a musician does. The advanced ebook will teach you to improvise, transpose, and modulate music. It delves into more complex topics and some of the more mysterious elements of music theory become more apparent. For instance, the relationship between various keys (tonality) as well as the rules of chord progression are explained. All of these things work to foster a sense of musicianship in you by teaching you how to understand and create music rather than simply mimic and perform particular piano pieces.

As stated above, all of these ebooks are filled with associated video and audio files to demonstrate the topic at hand. The videos typically offer a single view from above the keyboard and aren't high quality, but they are of adequate quality and clearly show the instructors hands at the keyboard.

The Supplementary Ebooks

• The Jazz Piano ebook gives instruction in jazz piano playing. It gives a thorough grounding in the history and unique qualities of the jazz style. You'll learn to play the distinctive rhythms, chords, and beats that make up this lively piano style.
• The Gospel, Spiritual, and Hymns ebook teaches the history and theory associated with Gospel piano music. This primarily revolves around knowledge of and practice with the Pentatonic and Blues scales.
• Fingering Techniques and Exercises provides practical exercises and direction for mastering finger technique and developing dexterity - a must in any piano training regimen. It also adds to the topics of playing by ear, improvising, and playing arpeggios that were already covered in the 3 main ebooks.
• Advanced Learning Techniques for Piano focuses not on the physical techniques of playing piano, but on the mental and psychological aspects. It contains great advice and useful methods for developing the mental skills that are needed to learn and excel at the piano.

Bonuses

• 26 Jam Tracks - recordings of songs with and without the piano part so that you may practice and gauge your ability in a real-life band or ensemble.
• Every music student needs a metronome so that he/she can develop a sense of rhythm, which is all important in music. Rocket Piano provides a software metronome for free.
• One of the most trying tasks to a piano student is learning to read music. Rocket Piano does a good job of not overloading you with the tedious details of reading music, but instead peppers them lightly throughout the course. As another free bonus the course includes Jayde Music Pro software, a game that will teach you to read music in a fun and easy way.
• The Chordinator is another free piece of software that enhances your ability to read music. It's focus is on chords and teaches you to quickly identify and locate chords on the musical staff.
• The Perfect Your Pitch Pro software bonus is a great tool that trains your ear to recognize pitches. This is something that many musicians ignore, yet is a virtual necessity when trying to transcribe music or write songs.
• Perhaps the most interesting bonus included with Rocket Piano is the 30 day free membership to SongPond. This website provides video lessons by music instructors that teach you to play "specific" songs. So, if there is a particular piece of music that you're dying to learn just visit SongPond and get professional instruction for learning to play it.

Price and Guarantee

Rocket Piano sells for $39.95 (the physical version is $199.95). Purchasing the course (either version) entitles you to a 60% discount on their Singorama course, if you're interested in learning how to sing.

They offer a 60-day 100% money-back guarantee. If you purchase the physical version of the course, then of course you would have to return it for your refund.

Support

Rocket Piano offers customer support via email as well as maintaining a thorough FAQ section. You're also entitled to a free piano consultation with the staff at Rockstar Recipes. However, it appears that this is only offered once, so we advise you to save up your questions and concerns to make the most of this consultation. The software is offered in both PC and Mac versions.

Final Analysis

Rocket Piano will serve beginner to intermediate piano students best. While Rocket Piano is not as comprehensive as The Piano System it does come close and at a much cheaper price tag. The quality of the video demonstrations, while certainly adequate, don't measure up to the quality of L&M Piano or The Piano System. Also, some may find the separation of the audio and video files from the ebook a little disorganized and less fluid than other courses. However, Rocket Piano does a good job of referencing the two components together and it really doesn't create any impediments to the learning process.

While Rocket Piano does offer email support, something like the user support forum provided by Learn & Master would be a better option. Taken as a whole though, Rocket Piano provides a fairly large amount of quality piano instruction, which is the most important factor in self-study piano lessons. In fact, the decent amount of training materials at such a low price is what makes this piano software so worthy. Furthermore, Ruth Searle has a great personality and is quite knowledgeable, which makes learning from her a real treat.

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