Smart Pianist - US 4+

I use it with the Clavinova CSP-170.
The interface and menu navigation could be significantly improved. For example, once you have selected a song to play you need to press “song” to load it.. It is redundant and not intuitive to know “song” means load. It may seem like a slight annoyance but it is a frequent operation and not compatible with Apple’s logical way of navigating menus.
In terms of learning, it is lacking some crucial options to take advantage of the great piano features, like the follow lights are helpful but if you are trying to learn a small tricky section of a song there is no way to select a small portion of sheet music and repeat it so that you can dial in on the mechanics… instead you are forced to practice the song it is entirety, which is not efficient… sure you could use the small scroll bar to move forward but it is not precise and is tedious and not worth the effort.
It would be great to see an update… it would show that Yamaha is invested their products and not settling for good enough.

I just received a Yamaha Clavinova CSP-170 yesterday and was eager to try out this essential app to go with the piano. The app doesn’t disappoint as it unlocks features often found only in the higher-end and more expensive CVP Clavinova line. These include a wide variety of realistic instrumental voices, multi-track recording, and auto-accompaniment styles that analyze your playing to simulate a backup band or orchestra accompanying you. The most innovative feature is the app’s ability to take songs from your iPad’s music library and generate an interactive chord chart for you to play along with. While the chord analysis isn’t perfect, it is amazing how far the technology has come. When it does not analyze the harmonies correctly, I like how you can go in and easily edit the chart when you know the chord just isn’t right. These are all features found in Yamaha’s other Chord Tracker app, but Smart Pianist takes it to a whole new level by quickly generating a digital sheet music score that can be customized to the song’s style and pianist’s ability. It took some getting use to the instrument’s built-in Stream Lights, but this can be a very handy practice tool for users that need extra assistance in finding the correct keys to play. I commend Yamaha on putting together a winning combination of software and a fine musical instrument.

You want to download a classical piece to utilize the light guide feature and reduce the frustration caused by trying to map notes in musical notation to the keyboard and make the learning experience more pleasant? Well, you came to the wrong place. This app forces you to buy garbage content from MusicSoft site where there aren’t technically real classical pieces. In addition, it forces you to only use midi files to download from Dropbox or load them from your own local storage. And guess what? Whatever software you are using to export your piece to midi format this app will gladly shift the notes to the treble clef and leave the bass clef with just rest notes! All attempts have led me to this. Now, I get to see this nice piece of furniture for the next 20 months while seeing $200 dollars getting deducted from my bank account for a piano I am not using. I should have bought a mid end Roland portable digital piano and the hi light product from The One where at least I get access to the seek and fix these minor problems by myself.
Yamaha, if you care about your customers. Please fix this and I will gladly remove this review and leave a 5 stars one.