Frequently asked questions

You need an instrument of some kind, because the whole point of sight-reading practice is connecting the notation on the page to your hands on real keys. Any piano will do: the Unplugged setting is made for an acoustic piano, or a keyboard with no MIDI port, and needs nothing connected and no permissions.

What a MIDI port adds is feedback. Plugged in over USB, every note you play reaches the app, so it grades pitch and rhythm and marks the notes on the staff as you pass them. Unplugged it cannot hear you at all — so instead it stops every few bars and plays those bars back, and you judge what you played against what was written.

Pick one or more key signatures, set the note range you want for each clef, and choose how many bars the drill should run to. Your input is set once on the dashboard rather than per drill, since it describes the instrument in front of you rather than the exercise.

If you are not sure where to begin, a 25-note drill in C Major spanning C4 to C5 in the treble clef and C3 to C4 in the bass clef is a good first session. Widen the range once you can get through it without hesitating.

You need an account to save drills and keep your statistics and streak, because those are tied to your profile.

Signing up is free and takes a few seconds: use Google, Apple or Facebook, or ask for an email magic link on the sign-in page. There is no password to remember and no credit card required.

There is no separate native app in the App Store or on Google Play. This is a responsive web app that is designed to work on phones and tablets as well as desktops.

On iOS use Share → Add to Home Screen, and on Android use the browser menu → Install app. It then launches full-screen with its own icon and behaves like an installed app, while always being up to date.

Plugged in, your keyboard sends the app a message for every key you press, with the moment it happened. That is what makes grading possible: pitch, rhythm, continuity, structure and recovery are all measured from those messages, notes are marked on the staff as the playhead passes them, and the run feeds your skill profile.

Unplugged, nothing reaches the app at all. It still sets the pace, keeps the click, scrolls the score and gives you the preview — but it cannot tell whether you played the right notes, so it does not pretend to. Instead it stops every few bars and plays back the bars you have just read: a misread note or a botched rhythm is obvious the moment you hear the written version.

There was, and it was quietly dishonest. Pitch detection hears one note at a time, so it could never read a chord or two hands at once, and it needs several stable frames before it will commit to a note — around 90ms, varying with the register, the room and the instrument. We compensated for the average delay and then scored rhythm with what was left, which meant a player could be marked late for their detector rather than for their playing.

A reader on an acoustic piano is better served by the app admitting it cannot hear them and playing their own bars back instead. If you want your playing graded, that needs a MIDI port; there is no way around it.

MIDI input uses the Web MIDI API, which is supported by Chrome, Edge, Opera and other Chromium-based browsers on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and ChromeOS, and by Safari 18 and later on macOS, iPadOS and iOS.

Firefox does not enable Web MIDI by default, and no browser on iPhone or iPad can offer it at all, since every browser there is Safari underneath. If your browser cannot see your keyboard, connect it by USB before loading the page, grant the MIDI permission prompt, and check that no other application has exclusive control of the device. Unplugged practice works in every browser, everywhere.

Grading is octave-accurate. A note written on the second space of the treble staff is A4, so playing A3 or A5 is counted as incorrect even though the letter name matches. Reading the correct octave is a large part of reading the grand staff, so we do not ignore it.

If you are consistently an octave out, check that you are starting from the right hand position, and watch for the clef change between the upper and lower staff. Check too that your keyboard is not transposed or octave-shifted, since it then sends a different note from the key you press.

The music is written for piano on a grand staff. Unplugged you can read it on anything that plays the notes, since nothing is being checked either way.

For graded practice it has to be a Web MIDI device, which includes MIDI guitars and wind controllers as well as keyboards. Bear in mind that a transposing instrument sends a different note from the written one, so it will be graded against what it sends.

Each correct note earns 10 points, minus 1 point for every 500 ms you took to play it. Answer instantly and you keep close to the full 10; take three seconds and that note is worth about 4. A note is never worth less than zero, and incorrect notes score nothing.

The formula deliberately rewards fluent reading rather than careful puzzling, which is exactly the skill sight-reading requires. Alongside the score we record your accuracy percentage and the timing of every note so you can see whether you are getting faster, more accurate, or both.

Your streak counts consecutive days in which you completed at least one drill. Days are measured in UTC, so a new day starts at 00:00 UTC no matter where you live — worth knowing if you usually practise late in the evening in the Americas or early in the morning in Asia.

Miss a full UTC day and the streak resets to zero the next time you practise. Your longest streak is kept in your profile either way.

Every graded note is stored with the note name, clef, key signature and how long you took, which lets us rank the notes you get wrong or hesitate over most. Ledger lines, notes with accidentals and the middle of the bass staff are common offenders.

The fix is a narrow drill: build a short session whose range covers only the two or three problem notes, run it a few times, then widen the range again. Weak-note analysis over your full history is a Pro feature; on the free tier you can still see your recent accuracy.

Yes, and many do. A teacher can build drills that match exactly what a student is working on — a single key, a restricted range, a specific number of notes — and use the accuracy and timing numbers as objective evidence of progress between lessons.

Each student should have their own free or Pro account so that their statistics, streaks and weak spots stay separate; accounts are personal and should not be shared. If you would like to organise several students under one billing arrangement, email us and we will help.

The free tier is permanent, not a trial. It includes 2 saved drills, drills in any one of the 30 keys, every note value from whole notes to sixteenths, any hand span inside the two staves, up to 12 bars per drill, 7 days of statistics history, and the same octave-accurate grading whatever you play on.

Pro unlocks drills that change key part-way, both hands sounding together and chords, ranges past the staves out to the whole keyboard, much longer drills and faster tempos, eye-hand span training, unlimited saved drills, unlimited history and the weak-note heatmap.

Pro is $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year, which is about 16% less than paying monthly. Prices are in US dollars.

There is no free trial, because the free tier does that job better: you can use the app properly, for as long as you like, before deciding to pay. Checkout is handled by Stripe, and we never see your card details.

Yes. Open the Stripe Billing Portal from your account settings and cancel there in a couple of clicks — no email required, no retention interview.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, so you keep Pro until then and you are not charged again. The portal is also where you update your card or download invoices.

Nothing is deleted. Your saved drills, statistics and streak all stay in your account, but Pro-only drills are clamped to the free limits until you resubscribe: only your 2 most recent drills are playable, a drill that toured several keys reads the first of them, two hands fall back to alternating bars, and long drills run to the first 12 bars.

Resubscribe at any time and everything reappears exactly as it was, with your full history intact.

Yes. Email support@sightreadingtraining.com within 14 days of a charge and we will refund it, no argument. After 14 days refunds are at our discretion, and we still honour any stronger right your local consumer law gives you.

No. MIDI messages from your keyboard are read in the browser and never transmitted. The app does not ask for microphone access at all any more — pitch detection was removed, so there is no audio to record even in principle.

The only thing saved from a session is the outcome, for example "expected F4, played E4, 620 ms", which is what your statistics are built from.

We store your email address, the name and avatar your sign-in provider gives us, your saved drills, your session results and your streak. Analytics are cookie-free and aggregated, and there are no advertising cookies anywhere on the site.

You can ask for a copy of your data or delete your account and its data at any time by emailing support@sightreadingtraining.com. The privacy policy explains retention, processors and your GDPR and CCPA rights in detail.