How the falling notes work on your PC
Every note becomes a bar that falls toward its key. The longer the bar, the longer you hold the note, and its colour tells you which hand plays it. When it reaches the glowing line, the key lights up and the sampled grand piano of the Windows app, the Akai-Steinway III by Denis, plays it as softly or as loudly as written. Above the keys, 3D hands play along, so you see the fingering instead of guessing it.
The music comes from wherever you like. Pianovera ships with 651 pieces, most of them in a beginner, intermediate and original version, and it opens your own .mid and .midi files. Need a file to start with? Our free piano MIDI files come with their sheet music.
Then you pick how to play: Free play to watch and listen, Wait to stop until you press the right key, Learn in sections, or Scored scrolling to be scored at tempo. In the free version, Wait works on the free pieces, in the lessons and in the daily challenge, and Scored scrolling once a day; Premium opens the rest. On a PC you can play the on-screen keyboard with the mouse, plug in a USB MIDI keyboard (Pianovera only reads it and never sends anything back), or sit at your acoustic piano: the microphone recognises the notes you play, and the sound stays on your computer.
Falling notes or sheet music? You can keep both
Falling notes get you playing fast: there are no clefs to decode, the screen shows the key and the moment. That is also their limit. On their own they don’t teach you to read music, and they say little about phrasing, which is why many piano teachers are wary of them. We think they have a point.
So Pianovera keeps the score in view. The Sheet music view shows the whole page, and the “Line + notes” and “Scrolling + notes” views put a line of score, fingering included, right above the falling notes, with a cursor that follows the music. When you want to learn to read for real, the step-by-step piano lessons start at middle C, and Note reading trains you over 8 levels.
Export falling notes videos for YouTube and Shorts
Many people who look up falling notes want to make the videos, not just watch them. The Studio in the Windows app exports an MP4 straight from the piece, widescreen or vertical for Shorts, with your background, your logo and a title card, in 720p, 1080p or 4K at 30 or 60 fps. The piano sound is in the file, and the particles, halos and lighting you chose for playback are the ones you get in the video. No editing software needed.
The free version exports 2 videos a week, 30 seconds each, in 720p, without the hands and with the Pianovera watermark, from the free pieces and your own MIDI files. Premium removes those limits, goes up to 4K and adds the 3D hands to your videos.