For pianists learning to read music
Plug in your keyboard and play real pieces. MidiSlayer follows along, shows you every note you got right, and keeps score as you improve.
Free to try. Any MIDI keyboard. macOS, Windows, Linux and iPad.
How it works
Three moves to set up, then MidiSlayer gets out of the way and just listens. No card, no trial clock, no tutorial to sit through.
Step 01
MidiSlayer for macOS, Windows, Linux or iPad. No card, no trial clock ticking.
Step 02
Any MIDI keyboard over USB, or Bluetooth MIDI on iPad. No keyboard yet? The on-screen one gets you going.
Step 03
It follows along and shows you each note as you play it. Missed one? It comes round again until it sticks.
Free to start, and the free version never expires. Love it? Unlock the full version whenever you want: one payment, yours to keep, works offline.
See everything inside →Why MIDI, not a microphone
Every key arrives as a message: which note, how hard, when. Chords, runs, both hands, at tempo. All marked. Nothing guessed.
No microphone mode, on purpose. Any MIDI keyboard is enough, and a cable is best.
Why MIDI only →Free: the Beginner lessons, built into the app
Eleven short lessons that listen to every note you play, from finding C to reading both clefs.
The Beginner stage
Lesson 07
Don't just read it. Play it.
One small idea at a time, and something to play straight away. The lesson hears every note, names the one it wants when you're stuck, and lights the key if you need it. A check at the end, the day after, tells you it stuck.
The Beginner lessons, the Handbook and the Glossary are free. More stages are on the way, with the full version.
The whole app
Train, Games and Practice: three doors into the same simple loop. Something appears on the staff, you play it on your piano, and you see straight away how you did.
Read the staff
Build the shapes
Own the harmony
A note lands on the staff, you play it, you see if you got it. The foundation of it all.
How it helps you improve
Your tricky notes come round more often, mixed in with the easy ones, until they feel familiar. No playlists to build, no drills to pick. You play, it remembers.
Every prompt is dealt from the whole pool. What changes is the odds: these are the app's own weights for what comes next.
Play real pieces
Flashcards build the reflex. The point is playing music you love. Pick a piece, and MidiSlayer follows you across the staff, note by note.
Wait mode. The cursor waits for each note until you play it. Learn the piece at your own pace.
Tempo mode. A count-in, a metronome, and a cursor that keeps going. Every note lands early, late or right on time.
69 pieces in the box, from Twinkle, Twinkle to the Goldberg Variations. One per shelf is free to play.
Open any MusicXML file and MidiSlayer engraves it on the spot: your exam piece, your teacher's arrangement, the movement you've been circling for years. Wait and tempo mode work on it exactly like the pieces in the box.
Watch yourself improve
A few notes today. A little more tomorrow. MidiSlayer remembers every session, note by note, so you can see it all adding up.
Every square, a day at the keys.
The days add up. Your personal bests move up.
See your rank and points grow, with personal bests for every mode.
Note weakness map Slowest notes First-try accuracy Exam score and rank per mode
Your practice data lives on your machine. Optional sync for streaks and bests. No ads. No profiles. No peeking.
Roadmap
12 releases since Early Access opened, every one of them free, and the next ones are already on the stave.
Simple pricing
A practice tool is more like a metronome than a streaming service. Pay once, use it for good. Free updates through v1, no monthly bill, and it is still there, ready, when you come back to the piano after a break.
One payment costs about three months of a typical monthly plan. Then it stops asking.
$0
forever · no card, no clock
$49.99
one-time · yours to keep
Buying from somewhere else? You pay in your own currency, shown at checkout before you commit.
refunds handled by Paddle, our merchant of record · secure checkout · instant delivery
Your key and account live on the email you enter at checkout, so use one you'll keep.
How it works
UK and EU prices include VAT; elsewhere any local tax is added at checkout · sold direct through Paddle, our merchant of record · refunds handled by Paddle · on iPad you can also buy in the app, through the App Store
Questions people ask
For the full experience, yes. Any MIDI keyboard works, from a $25 controller to a digital grand, over USB or, on iPad, Bluetooth MIDI paired from the app. No keyboard handy? The built-in on-screen keyboard is enough to try it out. The real thing wants real keys.
No. MidiSlayer listens over MIDI only, on purpose: a MIDI keyboard tells it every note, how hard and when, so chords and both hands are marked exactly instead of guessed from sound. A digital piano with a USB socket, any USB MIDI keyboard, or a Bluetooth MIDI one on iPad, is all it needs.
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows 10/11, Linux (.deb, .rpm and AppImage) and iPad (iPadOS 16 or later, from the App Store, in landscape). Under the hood it's a lean native app with a native Rust core: MIDI timing comes off your hardware, your data lives in a local database, and after the one-time licence activation you can practise entirely offline. The app only reaches the network to check your licence, look for updates and, only if you switch it on, sync your progress summary.
Really. One payment and it's yours to keep, with every update through v1 included. No monthly fee, no expiry, nothing to lose access to. A tool you keep, not a treadmill you rent. (Studio seats for schools work differently: those are invoiced per seat once a year.)
A lot. The eleven Beginner lessons, with the Handbook and the Glossary. Note Flashcards in full, the Blitz arcade game, a free run of Cascade every day (the Daily Challenge), a jam session over the Pop Loop, and the whole score library to browse and listen to, with four pieces fully playable, one per shelf. Later lesson stages come with the full version. The free part is free forever, with no card and no trial clock.
Especially for you. MidiSlayer starts with eleven short Beginner lessons, from finding C to reading both clefs. They listen to every note you play, and if you get stuck the lesson names the note, then lights the key. A Handbook and a Glossary sit alongside. All of it is in the free version; the later stages come with the full version.
Your licence covers two devices at once, any mix of Mac, Windows, Linux and iPad. On the iPad you sign in with the email you bought with rather than pasting the key. Moving to a new machine is one click of "Deactivate on this device" in Settings. If a dead machine took a slot with it, you can free it yourself from your account page, or email us and we'll do it.
Yes. Activate your licence once and training, games and progress all work without internet, forever. The app only reaches the network to check your licence, to look for updates and, only if you switch it on, to sync your progress summary between your machines. It keeps working when it can't.
On your device, in a local database. No ads, no analytics trackers, and we don't sell your data. Your weak notes are between you and your piano. By default all we hold is your licence: your email, your key, which machines it's on and when each last checked in. If you turn on the optional sync, we also keep a small progress summary (settings, achievements, streaks, best scores) so another machine can pick it up; you can delete it from the app's settings whenever you like.
Not on a computer. You buy, your key arrives by email, you paste it into the app. On the iPad you sign in once with the email you bought with, and that is how your licence comes across. If you'd rather manage things yourself there's an optional account at platform.midislayer.com/account: sign in with a link sent to your email (no password) to see your key, check which machines it's on and free a slot. Beyond that, the one thing an account adds inside the app is the optional progress sync in Settings.
The standard licence is for your own playing, including your own practice as a teacher. Teaching with MidiSlayer, or installing it on your students' machines, is what the Studio plan covers: seats billed once a year on a single invoice, at a rate that drops as you take more. The Studio page has the numbers.
One you'll keep. The address you enter at checkout is paired with your licence key: your key lands there, it is the email you sign in with on the iPad, your account signs in with a link sent there, and support recognises you by it. A work address you might lose is a bad fit. Bought with the wrong one, or moving on from an old address? Contact us and we'll move your licence over.
Purchases and refunds are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record, under Paddle's refund policy. Ask at paddle.net or email us and we'll get it in front of Paddle. Bought inside the iPad app? That purchase is Apple's, so the refund request goes to Apple. The free version exists so you can be sure before you buy.
Something else? Ask us directly. A human reads it, promise.
