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Comment by yakito | Hacker News Reader

I've previously used PianoVision, and it worked quite well. The concept seems similar, now augmented with VR. I anticipate that VR pianos will evolve to such an extent that they'll replace traditional pianos in many scenarios (like teaching/learning) https://www.meta.com/experiences/5271074762922599/

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> they'll replace traditional pianos in many scenarios

I'm not convinced. Totally VR pianos are obviously a bad idea just like totally VR keyboards for typing are rubbish for anything more complex than a wifi password.

And as for learning using VR - well, I'm not convinced by things like pianovision. How do you learn a piece with that? With sheet music I can play the music at my own speed, when and how I want. I can go back and play a measure a few times to experiment with timing. Speed up and slow down, and develop my own ear for how I want it to sound. If I'm feeling cheeky, I'll improvise extra notes in the song, or take some notes out if I'm not feeling it. At an instrument, sheet music is a polite suggestion.

I can imagine playing something like pianovision and getting good at pushing the buttons at the right time like guitar hero. But being a human shaped CD player feels like a very small part of what makes a musician.

Getting good at pushing the buttons is exactly it. Just being able to hit the note that you want to hit on an instrument is a skill

I agree for pianos, because the mechanical feedback is part of what makes playing enjoyable.

I'm not as sure for keyboards in VR! There has been a lot of research on non-invasive brain computer interface (BCI), including predictive systems that guess what you want to type, instead of where you're actually typing (example from 8y ago [1]).

Simpler gesture recognition is already on the market (like this one, from 2020, for the apple watch [2]). And now bigger VR players are investing in the tech [3]. I expect useful brain interface to be integrated in common VR devices in a couple of generations.

[1] Air Keyboard: Mid-Air Text Input Using Wearable EMG Sensors and a Predictive Text Modeland a Predictive Text Model; https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... [2] https://mudra-band.com/ [3] https://www.androidcentral.com/gaming/virtual-reality/zucker...

I think a melodica is a good comparison and goal.

A melodica is not good for learning piano obviously but is a really interesting musical instrument in and of itself.

Trying to replace the real instrument makes about as much sense as a paper computer keyboard for learning typing. If you really want to learn to type, you obviously are going to "invest" in a real computer keyboard.

If that investment is too much up front then you have already set yourself up for failure so what is the point?

Pianovision encourages connecting a midi piano to the headset. It also uses sheet music and has over 1000 works with finger numbers and sections. Virtual keyboards require haptics to get a lot better, still it is better than nothing at all.

The weight of the keys are an extremely important factor. Pianos and even good digital pianos have hammer action keys.

You have no way of control the volume with this.

I don’t think digital will ever replace a real piano.

Wanted to add:

This isn't to say that something like this can't make its own cool instrument, but as to learning the piano, no matter how good the tech is, its always going to be an imitation of the real thing. Which isn't to say that its useless for learning piano either.

What? Why would they? Digital piano sounds still can't reproduce the richness of dynamics and texture of an acoustic piano. Practising on a digital keyboard and then performing on a real piano is jarring enough, let alone using an instrument with zero haptic feedback. This is pure gimmick.

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