Boo fucking hoo, technology is making music more accessible and removing the barriers associated with sheet music. Fire is scary and Thomas Edison was a witch.
Yes, I said barriers.
Not everyone is great at reading sheet music. I started playing piano when I was four and I still absolutely SUCK at sheet music. It’s just never clicked for me. I can identify notes, given enough time, but it takes me forever to learn a new piece, I often have to literally mark what a note is, and sight-reading is incredibly far beyond me. If I had access to this, maybe I would still be playing piano instead of just letting it gather dust in the spare room. Maybe I would still be improving my skills. Heck, maybe I could use it as a tool to IMPROVE MY SHEET MUSIC READING.
Think of how accessible this makes piano music to the sight-impaired. How much easier it is to see those colored bars and lit keys than the little dots on little lines on a page.
Stairs didn’t go out of style because we invented escalators. Books didn’t go out of style because Kindles are a thing. Sheet music isn’t going to just up and vanish because there’s a new alternative on the block. You can keep playing from sheet music if that’s your thing, and people will keep learning from it.
But I can see this being fantastic for people who sheet music just really isn’t their thing, because of accessibility or other reasons.
