Frequently asked questions

No. Every drill can be played on the on-screen virtual piano with a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen, so a laptop or phone is enough to start.

That said, the point of sight-reading practice is to connect the notation on the page to your hands on real keys. If you do have an acoustic piano or a digital keyboard, use microphone or MIDI input instead — the drills are identical, but your practice transfers directly to the instrument.

Pick one or more key signatures, set the note range you want for each clef, choose how many notes the drill should contain, and pick an input method. Start the drill and the grand staff appears with the first note highlighted.

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, streak and XP, 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.

Your browser streams microphone audio into the Web Audio API, and the pitchy library estimates the fundamental frequency of what it hears many times a second. That frequency is converted to the nearest note name and compared with the note currently highlighted on the staff.

All of this runs inside your browser. Audio is never recorded, uploaded or stored — only the detected note is used, locally, to grade you.

Pitch detection works on a single dominant pitch. Speech, television, traffic, a metronome clicking through the same speaker, or a second person playing nearby all add competing frequencies and can make the detector report the wrong note or none at all.

For the best results: practise in a quiet room, use headphones rather than loudspeakers so the app does not hear its own sound, put the device close to the instrument, avoid very heavy sustain-pedal use, and play single notes firmly. If detection still feels unreliable, a MIDI keyboard is dramatically more accurate.

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. 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. The microphone and on-screen piano work everywhere as a fallback.

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. With microphone input, confirm your instrument is tuned to A440 and not transposed, since a transposing digital piano will sound a different pitch than the key you press.

The drills are written for piano on a grand staff, but microphone input simply listens for pitch, so any monophonic instrument that plays the notes shown will be graded correctly — guitar, violin, flute, brass, or singing.

Bear in mind that transposing instruments sound a different pitch from the written note, so a B-flat trumpet player reading concert-pitch notation will be graded against the concert pitch. MIDI input works with any Web MIDI device, including MIDI guitars and wind controllers.

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 C Major and A minor, up to 8 bars per drill, 7 days of statistics history, and all three input methods with the same octave-accurate grading.

Pro unlocks every major and minor key, multi-key drills, custom note ranges including ledger lines, much longer drills, unlimited saved drills, unlimited history and the weak-note heatmap.

Pro is $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year, which is about 30% 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, drills in other keys fall back to C Major or A minor, and long drills run to the first 8 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. Audio is analysed entirely in your browser with the Web Audio API and pitchy. It is never recorded, never transmitted and never stored — only the detected note name is used, locally, to grade the note in front of you. MIDI messages from your keyboard likewise never leave your device.

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 and XP counters. 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.