Which MIDI keyboards or USB pianos will work with Little Musician?

[Ted Lundgren]

Yesterday I downloaded the trial version of Little Musician, and I have to say it looks very good so far. My daughter simply loved the first lessons. Today I bought a MIDI keyboard to use with it, and that's when the problems started to turn up: The M-Audio Keystation Mini 32 didn't work with LM.

Therefore I'm now wondering: What MIDI keyboards or USB pianos can you verify will work with LM, provided you also have an "ordinary" laptop with an i5 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium x64, 8 gigs of memory, a decent sound card, and so on? 

[Skylark]

Ted Lundgren,

You do not need a keyboard to use Little Musician. If you would like to have a keyboard for your daughter to practice the notes she is learning in Little Musician curriculum, it would work with any keyboard or piano, really.

When you say your keyboard does not work with Little Musician, what exactly do you mean? Kindly let us know what you are trying to do, so we can help you!

[Ted Lundgren]

Thank you!

Forgive me for not being precise enough. The problem is that MIDI input doesn't seem to work in LM. For example, when using the function 'free play', no key is pressed on the virtual keyboard nor sound is heard when I press the corresponding keys on my M-Audio Keystation Mini 32. LM seems to be an awesome program, but if it doesn't accept input from a MIDI keyboard it is pretty much useless. I want my daughter to partly discover its functions by herself using ordinary piano keys, not the keys on a PC.

[Tamsyn]

That would be an awesome feature, but I don't think LMs has it.  Piano Wizard has a free-play part of their program like what you are describing.  As far as I know LMs was designed to be more of a singing/vocal and ear training program with some piano features added in as a perk.  It meets that objective very well.  So I don't think it's fair to say it's useless, it's just not meant to be a piano program.  I don't use the "free play" section very much myself, for the same reasons.  We click around on the mouse now and again.  I hope the developers see this thread, because adding MIDI capability in a future version would be really neat.  I've also recently gained the understanding that we can import our own MIDI files into LMs, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this yet.  It makes me wonder what else I've been missing.
At any rate, LMS is an amazing program, and we love it.  Piano Wizard may be a better fit for what you are looking for, IMO.

[Skylark]

Yes, Tamsyn is correct, Little Musician is meant to be Music Literacy, Ear/Vocal/Rhythm Training and Music Appreciation Program. It was not made for learning piano. Since you can start with the program years before child will be able to start with piano training, it provides invaluable tool, and can lay a good solid foundation before any instrument instruction.

For example, piano is not an instrument of choice at this point of time in our family, but through using Little Musician we gave quite good musical foundation to our children, our oldest has confirmed perfect pitch, all of our 3 children quite familiar with composers and classical music and can name many of classical compositions by hearing a few moments of them. They clearly have appreciation for and like classical music, which in many ways due to being familiar with it through Little Musician and Themes to Remember Programs.

I would say, Little Musician is unique in that way. And I like the fact that it is not tied just to the piano ( as most of the programs out there), but in each lesson children learn their notes, played by different instruments, learn about composers, instruments, styles, periods. They introduced to rhythm, musical notation, solfegio. It is a perfect fit for our family, and we are using it already with the 3rd kid 

[Ted Lundgren]

Right you are, of course. I didn't mean that the program is useless per se, just in relationship to its price. I think 100 USD or so would be a fair price when not offering the MIDI feature. Especially since you can easily create many of the included features yourself using Powerpoint or otherwise.   

[TeachingMyToddlers]

For piano compatible programs, you might want to look into Piano Wizard like Tamsyn suggested, or the Piano Mania app and there are
Many others out there. You can also memorize solfege songs from LMs and play them on corresponding colored keys on your piano. Just get some rainbow colored stickers (this is how my kids got started). Best of luck!

[HappyMom247]

Can anyone else please share their expeirences on using Piano Wizard or the Piano Mania app? Thanks

[vvaneesa]

MIDI is a very simple standard for transferring note information between a keyboard and computer. The M-Audio keyboards are excellent and can be used with any software that accepts MIDI inputs.

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