Piano - Music Keyboard & Tiles

Review by eFreeware

If you have ever wanted to learn piano but could not fit weekly lessons into your schedule, Piano by Gismart is built for exactly that gap. It turns a phone or tablet into an 88-key keyboard, so the practice space is wherever you already are, with no instrument to buy and no studio to travel to. The developer pitches it as an alternative to formal lessons, and the app's own framing is that of a simulator first and a game second.

The pitch rests on a simple idea: give beginners a full-size keyboard, a set of instrument sounds to explore, and short mini-games that make repetition feel less like homework. It has been on Google Play since June 2014 and carries a 4.1 average from more than 1.3 million ratings, with over 100 million installs behind it. That kind of reach suggests the free model has kept people coming back, even if a rating average tells you nothing about how any single person will get on with it.

What appeals to me here is the combination of scale and simplicity. You get the full keyboard layout, a choice of nine instrument voices, and songs to play. Whether it replaces a teacher is another question, and one the app answers through its own tools rather than through a classroom.

A full keyboard that fits in your hand

The centerpiece is an 88-key keyboard that you can set up in either a single scrollable view or a dual scrollable one. On a phone, a full 88-key range is never going to sit on screen at once, so the scrolling arrangement is the practical answer: you move along the keys rather than squashing them. The dual layout splits the keyboard so both hands have a region to work in, which is closer to how you would actually sit at a piano.

Sound is where the app widens out. There are nine keyboard and instrument options: a basic keyboard, grand piano, organ, harpsichord, accordion, electric guitar, harp, cello pizzicato, and a vintage piano. That range matters more than it might seem. Playing the same phrase on an organ or a harp changes how it feels under your fingers, and for a beginner it is a cheap way to explore tone without buying anything.

The developer describes the app as a realistic instrument-learning tool, which is the kind of claim I would treat as marketing rather than a specification. What the app plainly does is give you a keyboard, instrument voices, songs, and a recording feature. That is a coherent set of tools for someone starting out, and it is honest about being a simulator rather than a substitute for a weighted keybed.

Magic Tiles, Magic Keys and the pull of a quick session

The two mini-games are the app's answer to the boredom problem that sinks a lot of self-taught practice. In Magic Tiles you tap keys as tiles fall, playing along to famous songs. It is the familiar falling-note format, and the appeal is that you are producing recognizable music almost immediately, before you can read a score.

Magic Keys works differently. You tap white and black keys at random as they come up, and the point is timing and tempo rather than melody. It is a drill dressed as a game, and for anyone whose rhythm is shaky, that kind of repetition is exactly what a teacher would assign. Neither mode asks you to understand notation first, which lowers the entry barrier considerably.

I would expect these two modes to do most of the work of keeping a new player engaged. They give a session a natural length, and they turn the keyboard into something you can pick up for a few minutes rather than a formal practice block. The trade-off is that tapping falling tiles is not the same skill as reading music, so the games are a way in rather than the whole path.

Songs, chords and learning to read the page

Beyond the games, the app includes a library of popular and classic songs to play, and the developer says it teaches chords and how to read sheet music. Those two things together are the more traditional side of the app: you learn what a chord is, you learn to follow notation, and you apply both to pieces you recognize.

That combination is what separates a learning tool from a toy keyboard. The mini-games build timing and familiarity with the keys; the chord and notation material gives that familiarity somewhere to go. A beginner working through both would be building the same foundations a teacher would start with, just at their own pace and without an appointment.

The record feature closes the loop. You can capture what you play and share it, including on social media and on Creatubbles, a sharing space intended to be safe for children and adults. Recording your own playing is a useful habit for a learner, because hearing a phrase back is often the moment you notice where your timing slipped.

Free to start, funded by ads and purchases

Piano by Gismart is free to download, and it contains ads and offers in-app purchases. Those are the two funding mechanisms, and they are worth knowing about before you install rather than after. The app has been free in this form for years.

I would not read the presence of purchases as a barrier to using the app. What the purchases buy is not set out anywhere, so I would go in treating the free experience as the thing being offered and any purchase as a separate decision you can make later. The same goes for the ads: they are part of the deal, and how much they intrude is something you will judge for yourself.

The practical point is simply that this is a free app with ads and in-app purchases. If that model does not appeal to you, it is worth weighing before you commit your practice time to it.

Who will get the most from this keyboard

The clearest fit is a beginner who wants to try piano without buying an instrument or booking lessons, and who is happy to learn through a screen. The 88-key layout, the nine instrument sounds and the two mini-games give that person a lot to work with on a phone or tablet, and the chord and notation material gives the practice a direction beyond tapping tiles.

It also suits someone returning to piano after a long break, or a parent looking for something a child can explore on a shared device. A household tablet with a keyboard app on it is a low-commitment way to find out whether anyone in the family takes to it.

What it is not is a replacement for a real instrument in the hands of someone already advanced. An 88-key range on a touchscreen is still a touchscreen, and the mini-games are built around tapping rather than touch and dynamics. The app is at its best as a starting point and a daily habit, not as a conservatory.

The verdict on Piano by Gismart

Piano by Gismart does one thing well: it puts a full keyboard, several instrument voices and a set of songs on the device you already own, and it uses two mini-games to make the early weeks of learning feel less like a chore.

The caveats are the model and the medium. Ads and purchases are part of the experience, and a touchscreen keyboard will never feel like an acoustic piano. If you accept those two things, the app is a sensible place to start learning chords, notation and timing, especially if formal lessons are not realistic right now.

I would recommend it to beginners, returners and families who want to test the waters without spending on an instrument. Install it, work through the songs and the two games, and see whether the habit sticks. If it does, you will have learned something real along the way.

What's new in version 1.75

We’ve made some app stability improvements and fixed the bugs reported by our users. Keep the app regularly updated to always have our greatest features!