See where your piano timing drifts

Most piano apps tell you what to press while you play. Notedrift does the opposite. It lets you play the whole piece at your own speed, with nothing on the screen to chase, and then reviews your take the way a patient teacher would: note by note, bar by bar, in words you can act on.

Pick a piece, play it on a MIDI keyboard or near your phone's microphone, and Notedrift lines your take up with the score. You see which notes were wrong or missing, which bars rushed or dragged, and which passage to practise next.

How it works

1. Pick a piece from the library. Pieces that fit your level are listed first, and you can listen to any of them before you play.
2. Play it from start to finish. Notedrift does not stop you, scroll ahead of you or ask you to keep up.
3. Read your review. Notedrift compares what you played with the score and tells you what went well and what to work on.

The whole analysis runs on your phone or tablet. There is no account to create, and nothing you play is uploaded.

Record with a MIDI keyboard or the microphone

Notedrift can hear you in two ways, and you switch between them with one tap:

• MIDI keyboard. Connect a digital piano or keyboard with a USB (OTG) cable, or over Bluetooth MIDI. Notedrift receives every key press with its exact time and strength, so the review is exact, note for note. This is the best choice if your instrument has MIDI.
• Microphone. For acoustic pianos, and for keyboards without MIDI. Put the phone on a steady surface about 1 m from the piano; a quiet room works best. Notedrift turns the sound into notes on your device.

Listening is harder than reading MIDI, and Notedrift is honest about it. A microphone review shows how confident the app is, and notes it is unsure of count less in your score, so one doubtful note never spoils a good take.

Turn on the metronome and you get one measure of count-in, then a steady beat while you record. Choose a practice speed between 50% and 100% of the piece's tempo. With the microphone, the metronome flashes instead of clicking by default, so the clicks stay out of your recording.

A review you can read in ten seconds

Every review starts with one plain sentence, such as "You played 170 of 178 notes right", followed by the passages that most need work and why: "3 wrong notes, 2 notes missed, 1 note too late".

Below it, four scores from 0 to 100 show where you stand:

• Right notes: how many notes of the score you played correctly.
• Timing: how close each note was to its beat.
• Steady tempo: whether you kept one speed or drifted faster or slower.
• Even touch: how evenly you pressed the keys (needs a MIDI keyboard).

A grid of every measure shows at a glance where the piece went well and where it did not. Tap a measure to jump straight to it.

Every wrong and missed note

Frame A shows the score and frame B shows what you played. Each bar is one note: time runs from left to right, and higher notes sit higher up. Notes you played right are green. A wrong note is red and tells you what you played instead, for example "Played C♯4 instead of C4". Missed notes and extra notes are marked too, each with its own symbol, so you never have to rely on colour alone.

Mistakes by measure lists the same information in words, bar by bar. Tap a measure to see its keys on a small piano keyboard: the right keys, the key you missed and the key you pressed by mistake.

See where your timing drifts

Playing the right notes is half the job. Notedrift also measures when you played them. A note that is slightly early or late turns orange, and one that is clearly off the beat turns red. In the list you read exactly how far off it was, such as "+84 ms".

Notedrift looks at the whole take too. If you rushed through the easy bars and slowed down in the hard ones, the Steady tempo score drops and the review points to the bars where your tempo drifted. That pattern is often the first thing a teacher notices, and the hardest one to hear yourself.

Hear the difference (A/B)

Select a measure, press A to hear how it should sound, then B to hear how you played it. A cursor follows the music in both frames. Listening to the two back to back often explains a mistake faster than any chart. For the most natural playback, download the optional real piano sound, a recorded piano used for playback and MP3 export.

Three levels, three ways to explain

Not everyone reads music, and a beginner should not be judged like an advanced player. Tell Notedrift how well you read music, and it changes both how it explains your review and how strictly it judges your timing:

• I can't read music yet: plain words and stars, timing judged gently.
• I read music slowly: words first, then the score and your take side by side, with note names.
• I read music well: scores and charts first, timing to the millisecond.

You can change your level at any time.

Practise the passage that needs it (Pro)

When a review suggests a passage, tap it to practise just those measures. Notedrift records and reviews only that passage, so you can repeat a hard spot five times in the time one full take would take.

To learn a passage, slow it down first. Play the score at 50% to 90% of its tempo and listen to every note clearly, then build back up to full speed. Over several takes, Notedrift notices habits that repeat, such as left-hand notes that tend to come late, and a progress chart shows how your right notes and timing improve.

A library to start with

Notedrift comes with 20 pieces, from first exercises and tunes such as Ode to Joy and Frère Jacques to the Minuet in G major and the openings of Für Elise and the Prelude in C major.

With Notedrift Pro, the online library adds 440 more: Schumann, Mozart, Chopin, Bach and many others, all in the public domain or under a Creative Commons licence. Search by title or composer, filter by level, listen first, then add the pieces you want to practise. Every piece shows its licence and its source, and you can also import your own MIDI and MusicXML files.

Private by design

• Your recordings are analysed on your device and never leave it.
• No account, no sign-in.
• No ads, no analytics and no tracking.
• Works offline. The app goes online only to download pieces and the optional piano sound.

Notedrift Pro: one purchase, no subscription

Recording, reviews, A/B playback, the metronome, the three levels and the 20 built-in pieces are free. Notedrift Pro is a one-time purchase for players who practise regularly:

• the online library of 440 freely licensed pieces;
• import your own MIDI and MusicXML files;
• passage practice, and the score slowed down;
• habits that repeat, a measure-by-measure grid, and progress across takes;
• export any take as an MP3.

You pay once and keep it, and you can restore it on a new phone with the same Google account.

For phones and tablets

On a phone, the review is one column that you scroll. On a tablet, the score and your take sit on the left and the list of mistakes on the right, so you see both at once. With a computer keyboard attached, the arrow keys move between measures, Space plays your take and A plays the score.

• Android 10 or later, phone or tablet
• A piano or keyboard. For the most exact review, a MIDI keyboard connected over USB (OTG) or Bluetooth MIDI; otherwise any piano within about 1 m of the phone's microphone

The app collects no data and shares none with third parties. Your recordings are analysed on your device and never leave it. No ads, no analytics.