VR Piano Lessons
There’s a distinct lack of piano teachers in VR
I was hoping to set up a lesson with a real-life piano teacher in VR. Firstly because I think it will be useful for testing the app but also because I’m stuck indoors all day and I’d like to use some of that time to improve my piano-playing.
It’s proved very hard to find a piano teacher who also owns an Oculus Quest! I started out trying to contact people on Quest community forums, but with no luck I started emailing loads of Gumtree piano teachers asking if any of them had a Quest — none of them did! I guess most Quest owners, at the moment at least, are gamers, not pianists.
Having completely failed to find a Quest-wielding piano teacher, I fell back on plan B, which was to use my government-allotted daily walk to walk to my brother’s house and leave my spare Quest headset at his door. He kindly agreed to let me attempt to teach him to play a piece in virtual reality using Grand Reality.
You can see the video of our lesson below;
Conclusions
Like I say in the video, there are still a few teething problems but I’m finding ways to improve the user experience all of the time. Also, in many ways, a VR lesson is actually better than a traditional lesson. Aside from the obvious social-distancing benefit, the teacher can overlay their hand on the students— something that physics won’t let you do in real life. You’re also sat in exactly the same position relative to the piano, so there’s no leaning over, no contorting your body to hit those bass notes.
Do you know any piano teachers who have access to an Oculus Quest? It would really help me out if you can get in touch. Thanks!
You can download Grand Reality for free on SideQuest. Head over to https://GrandReality.app for more details.
If you don’t have a Quest then you can still view pieces on the web version of the app, available for free at https://GrandReality.net.