The Read Ahead app is no longer on the App Store. Here is what to use instead.

Read Ahead was an iPad sight-reading trainer built by two piano teachers who taught sight-reading at the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Conservatory. Its idea took one sentence to explain and years to get bored of: in their words, students "are compelled to read ahead of where they are playing because the music disappears in advance". You could not stare at what your hands were doing, because it was not on the screen any more, so your eyes had to be a bar ahead or nowhere. The vendor called it "disappearing music". Its archived level descriptions set out four levels, 1 to 4, and the last version, 6.0, is dated 11 October 2021 on the third-party mirror of its App Store listing.

The App Store description text, as mirrored by the third-party directory soft112.com and read there on 4 September 2026, opens with this sentence attributed to the developer: "Please Note that we have made all in-app purchases free because we are going out of business and will be shuttering the app in the near future." We could not find a primary or archived copy of the Apple listing to confirm it, and we have not reached Anacrusis LLC. If that quotation is wrong or has been altered, tell us and it comes down the same day.

That is Anacrusis LLC speaking about their business, and it is the only statement about the closure we will print. We do not know why. We did not ask, and we are not going to speculate about a small company that made something genuinely good and then stopped. What we checked, and what we could not check, is listed at the bottom of this page.

So, depending on which of these you are:

• You still have it on an iPad. We could not establish whether an existing copy still opens, so we are not going to tell you either way. Something no longer listed cannot be reinstalled or updated, which is a fact about the App Store rather than about the software. If yours still opens, use it, and have a look at the table while you can compare calmly.
• You want the disappearing trick specifically. Piano Tree has a read-ahead mode that hides the bar you are playing, and Sight Reading Factory has disappearing measures as an option. Both are in the table with their prices. MidiSlayer does not do it. The drills below are the version that needs no software at all.
• You want a graded course that marks you. MasterPiano and Piano Marvel, in the table.
• You want endless material you have never seen. Sight Reading Factory composes it on demand. SightReader generates it and marks your timing note by note.
• You want the paper. The printed Read Ahead books are a separate product from the app, and were still listed by booksellers when we looked on 3 September 2026.
• You just want to get better at reading ahead. Keep going, that is the rest of this section.

How to read ahead without an app

Reading ahead is a habit rather than a talent, and the app was a way of forcing the habit. It can be forced by hand.

Play one bar behind your eyes. Take something two grades easier than you play. Read bar one, then, while your hands play bar one, read bar two. The aim is not accuracy. The aim is that your eyes are never on the note your fingers are currently pressing.

The card trick. Slide an index card along the stave so it covers the bar you are playing, moving it just before you arrive. That is the same idea in cardboard, and teachers were doing it long before anyone shipped an app for it.

Never stop to fix anything. Most people cannot read ahead because they keep reversing. Set a metronome slow enough that stopping is never necessary, and play a whole line without correcting a single note. A wrong note in tempo costs less than a right note that arrives after a pause, which is also how ABRSM marks it.

Count out loud. It occupies the part of your brain that wants to go back and tidy up the last bar.

New music every day, badly. Reading only improves on music you have not seen. A pile of easy unseen pieces beats one hard piece read five times, because the fifth time is not reading, it is recall. There is a whole post on the dose: what to drill.

Read Ahead

Row one, because it is the thing you searched for. iPad only, last version 6.0 on 11 October 2021, not listed on the App Store in the US or the UK when we checked on 3 September 2026, and its old website no longer serves it. Of the rows below, Piano Tree and Sight Reading Factory both have a version of its one idea.

MasterPiano

Subscription, $99.99 a year as an intro price against $149.99, and $19.99 a month on its App Store listing. MIDI in, notation first, a large graded library and an ABRSM-structured technique curriculum in their own description. Free tier gives ten minutes a day, which is enough to test your keyboard and browse. Web and mobile, so an iPad is covered.

SightReader

£5 a month on the web, and £5.99 a month or £57.99 a year inside the iPhone and Android apps. The free tier has no clock on it: 54 pieces, unlimited drills and ten exercises generated a day, three of them playable. It marks each note early or late against a metronome, in milliseconds. On a computer it needs Chrome, Edge or Opera, and there are iPhone, iPad and Android apps.

Sight Reading Factory

$45 a year, browser first, with an iOS app. It composes exercises on demand, tuned down to rhythms, range, leaps and accidentals, so nothing can be memorised. Measures can be set to disappear as you play, which is the same idea Read Ahead was built on, and the endless supply is the closest thing here to what Read Ahead gave you. Assessment is microphone-only and after the fact: you record, then read the breakdown.

Piano Marvel

$129.99 a year, on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Chromebook, and the one here with a published scale behind the number: SASR, 100 to 1900 across 90 levels. SightReader also gives you figures, per note in milliseconds, and Sight Reading Factory scores a recording after the fact. Piano Marvel is the one where the number means the same thing next month. Real sheet music, real MIDI marking. If you liked Read Ahead's levels because they told you where you stood, this is the closest replacement.

Note Rush

One payment, $8.99, and the cheapest paid app in the table by a distance. It hears an acoustic piano through the microphone, transposes itself to your instrument, and drills single notes against the clock. Teacher-shaped: custom levels travel by link or QR code. Flashcards, not continuous reading.

MidiSlayer

One payment, $49.99, desktop only, built around a MIDI keyboard with an on-screen keyboard included, free version with no clock. Graded Reading works through the ABRSM parameters grade by grade, and Practice puts real pieces in front of you.