A Wizard in the Mix

For a clinical this semester, we are working in a senior living center and giving individual music therapy piano lessons. Personally, I have been taking piano lessons since I was in first or second grade, so I thought, “This will be easy! I have so much experience with piano lessons!”

Then we started working with a program, Piano Wizard. At first I thought it sounded weird and like a “cop out” because we were using a program and not just our own skills and such. But, since it was for a class, I obliged.

After a few weeks, though, I grew to love it! For someone just starting out on the piano, it is very accommodating and rewarding. It comes with a few songs already in the system for varying levels of expertise, tempo is easily adjustable, notes are easy to read, hands can be split up, and any midi file can be inputted as sheet music.

And as a music therapist… It is fantastic for data collection! Immediate data is outputted on note accuracy throughout the song! It takes away the objective “they did better” or “third try seemed better” and replaces it with “89% accuracy was obtained”.

For music therapists interested in piano lessons for any client population, this is a piece of technology that will be very useful and helpful for both you and your client!