Piano App for iPad & iPhone: The Best Virtual Pianos

Play the piano with iPad & iPhone – you have plenty of music apps to choose from! But which piano app for iOS devices offers you a good virtual piano? Here are our top piano apps for playing, practicing, and learning on mobile devices.

Today’s music and sound gadgets are incredibly versatile and surprisingly powerful. You can record music, train your musical ear, and view sheet music  – all using smartphones and tablets. Even playing the piano has gone mobile.

For the best sounds: iOS!

The best piano apps for playing and learning are available for iOS devices. While the selection for Android mobile devices is smaller, beginners can still find useful piano apps to learn their first notes on a virtual keyboard here. But if you’re serious about playing the piano, you’re well advised to check out iPhone and iPad apps instead.

What’s a Piano App?

Divided into four different categories, the range of piano apps is quite wide:

1. Piano Control App: Some manufacturers offer free apps that are primarily designed for use with a digital piano, and often only work with that manufacturer’s instruments. The sole purpose of these apps is to visualize and control the functions of the digital piano, making “piano control app” an appropriate term.
2. Beginner Piano App: Often resembling a video game in design, these apps are primarily made for children. A virtual keyboard is used to playfully teach the first steps of piano playing.
3. Virtual Piano App: These apps turn your smartphone or tablet into a piano sound module. They generate a piano sound that you can play on a virtual or external keyboard via USB or Bluetooth.
4. eLearning App: Some internet learning portals that specialize in online piano lessons offer piano apps that deliver course materials and lessons. Examples would be the Skoove and Flowkey portals. There are also numerous apps for learning notes, scales, chords, or even ear training. Other portals don’t even require an app, as you can simply take online lessons using your web browser.

There are also very specialized apps, such as those that let you tune your piano. Depending on the situation, recording apps can also be interesting when using several music apps at the same time. If you want to perform live with your tablet, there are useful apps like Audiobus, AUM, Steinberg Cubasis, and Korg Gadget, just to name a few.

Can You Learn to Play the Piano With a Piano App?

If you’re a complete piano beginner, the virtual keyboard of a piano app will be sufficient for playing your first piano notes. This way you can at least get a feel for how pianos, digital pianos, and keyboards produce notes. However, it should be obvious that you’ll never get an authentic piano feeling this way – better connect a master keyboard to your iPhone or iPad instead.

Can a Piano App Replace a Piano Teacher?

If you take a piano lesson on an eLearning portal, you can do so on your computer at home or on a mobile device via an app. Both Skoove and Flowkey offer special apps for iPad and iPhone, so you can work on your piano lessons practically wherever you are and whenever you have the time. However, eLearning does not replace traditional piano lessons.

Even though video chat can do a lot, face-to-face piano lessons still have a clear advantage when it comes to correcting incorrect hand positions, fingerings, musical expression, etc., while you are playing.

Learn more about eLearning Piano Lessons…

Virtual Piano – Top 5 Piano Apps

Use your iPhone and iPad as a piano sound module: The piano apps featured here offer virtual pianos and other sounds with a sound quality that rivals the software instruments you get in a DAW. Piano apps for mobile devices focus on ease of use and great sound.

Purchasing and Installing a Piano App for iPad & iPhone

Some apps work the typical way: just open the iTunes App Store and install the app after purchasing it. With some other apps, however, you buy and install piano sounds as an in-app purchase in a host app. While that’s easy as well, just keep in mind that you can’t find these virtual pianos directly in the App Store. This is the case for the Synthogy Ivory Mobile Pianos (Grand and American D) or the IK Multimedia iGrand extensions.

About iOS Licenses

In many cases, applications can run on all iOS devices. This means that once you purchase a license, you can use the app on an iPhone and an iPad at the same time. However, this is not automatically true for every app as some developers offer separate licenses for iPad and iPhone. While this is the exception, it for example applies to IK Multimedia iGrand. Except for the free versions, there are two apps: iGrand Piano for iPad and iGrand Piano for iPhone.

Did you know that you can cancel the purchase of apps at any time by deactivating the license from your iTunes account? So if you’re unsure whether you’re going to like the piano app after listening to the sound demos, you can install the app and take your time trying it out.

Piano Keys for Piano Apps

A piano app will only play well if you use a real keyboard. A small master keyboard – possibly one with mini keys – is hardly the solution for an authentic playing experience. Current piano apps, such as the Ravenscroft 275 Piano, are good enough to deserve a proper keyboard. A master keyboard with full-size piano keys is certainly a wise purchase, especially if you’re learning how to play the piano with a master keyboard and a piano app.

If you want to play the piano on the go, you will still need piano keys, of course, but with very few accessories you can at least turn even the oldest digital piano, stage piano, master keyboard, or MIDI keyboard into a modern piano with great sound and playing characteristics. All you need is a MIDI interface, which should be available on older devices. Learn more in this PIANOO.com guide “Piano On The Go: Practice Anywhere with Digital Piano and App.”

Read More

PIANOO.com Guides
Learning How to Play Piano on a MIDI Controller?

Piano On The Go: Practice Anywhere with Digital Piano and App

Hammer Action MIDI Controller