Learning Piano with Tokatab: Essential Resources to Progress

Welcome to the Tokatab universe, your new piano learning platform, designed with passion by professional musicians and certified piano teachers. At Tokatab, we offer you a complete and engaging learning experience, thanks to a wide range of carefully chosen educational resources to enrich your piano skills in a fun and structured way.

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced pianist, Tokatab offers four types of resources adapted to all levels:

1. Hundreds of exercises to master technical gestures, one by one.
2. Short videos that clearly show what to do or avoid for each technique.
3. Famous pieces, available in multiple arrangements, for the pleasure of playing and to impress those around you.
4. Musical challenges, drawn directly from pieces, to review your skills in a fun and interactive way.

We constantly enrich the app with new resources and features, thus guaranteeing continuous progress adapted to your learning pace.

Join Tokatab and transform your piano practice into a captivating and rewarding musical adventure!

Exercises to Learn Piano with Tokatab

More than 300 exercises are available on Tokatab, spread across six skill levels, from novice 1 to advanced. Whether you’re 100% beginner or already more experienced, you’ll have plenty to progress! The exercises are easily accessible via the “Lesson” tab of the app.

Each exercise is designed by the piano teachers of the Tokatab team. They enrich and develop our learning method daily. The goal is clear: to help you acquire identified and essential skills for piano practice, with personalized monitoring throughout your progression.

Based on your performance, Tokatab adapts the frequency of exercise review to ensure lasting skill acquisition. Exercises are specifically oriented for the left hand, right hand, or both simultaneously. The goal is to allow you to develop a complete and lasting piano technique, centered around five key skills:

• Melodic playing with each hand: Develop dexterity, fluidity of sequences, and rhythmic ability, as well as specific techniques for fluid and mastered playing.
• Chord playing with each hand: Master chords up to four notes, work on large chords, sequences, to be able to approach solo piano or accompaniment piano pieces.
• Arpeggios: With each hand or hands together. They are everywhere in pieces from yesterday and today.
• Hand independence: Allow playing identical or different patterns or gestures with each hand, essential for correctly executing the majority of piano pieces.
• Main rhythmic gimmicks: Familiarize yourself with common rhythmic figures in the left hand and with both hands, for solid rhythmic accompaniment.
• Phrasing: Cultivate a way of playing that reflects your musical intentions, to convey emotions and respect the intentions of composers.

Our users say it best:

“Tokatab really changed my way of working on piano! Or rather, I really started working on piano correctly thanks to Tokatab. The exercises are super well done and encourage me to work on technical stuff I was leaving aside, or especially, that I had trouble grasping even if I knew something was missing to master them” - Maxime, recurring Tokatab user since February 2023.

Videos to Have Examples of How to Properly Execute Gestures

One of the essential qualities of a piano teacher is their ability to show the right gestures and prevent bad habits that can develop if a student practices them incorrectly. Aware of this reality, we regularly enrich the “Lesson” tab of the Tokatab app with detailed educational videos. These videos are designed to clearly illustrate how to correctly execute key piano techniques, offering a necessary visual resource.

Every time an important new technique is integrated into our system, we take care to add corresponding explanatory videos. To ensure pedagogical progression adapted to each user, these videos are introduced in the app at the most relevant time according to personal advancement and specific student needs.

Complete Pieces to Play with Both Hands and at All Levels

Piano learning also happens by practicing complete and known pieces!

In lessons, students work with their teacher on technical exercises and in parallel on pieces chosen specifically to match their level and techniques they will appreciate putting into practice and concretely reviewing.

At Tokatab, our wish is to offer you a similar experience: play beautiful pieces that sound good and help you apply the skills you’re developing on piano.

Several dozens of pieces designed for all levels are available in the “repertoire” tab

We take care to arrange all the repertoire pieces in a way that promotes your progress. The idea is to allow you to learn by heart the pieces you love and choose to learn with the app so you can play them on any piano you find!

A piano in a train station, in the living room at friends’, or more simply at your place, for your own pleasure and relaxation… All pianos will be waiting for you!

The arrangements available on our app are based only on public domain works for two main reasons:

• So-called “classical” pieces, used by all piano teachers, are essential for learning this instrument. They offer a general foundation allowing you to approach many key techniques. Moreover, these works, while rooted in musical tradition, share common foundations with the majority of contemporary music, thus facilitating understanding and interpretation of current styles. Whether it’s chord progressions, rhythmic gimmicks, arpeggios, melodies, working on classical pieces allows progress in all styles!

• Tokatab respects copyrights, which is essential for us, as musicians and artists. In order to fully comply with legal and ethical requirements, we currently only offer public domain pieces on our app. This decision allows us to offer a piano learning tool while avoiding the financial and legal complexities related to acquiring licenses for protected works. We are in dialogue with music publishers and SACEM to explore possibilities of offering a wider range of pieces in the future by integrating non-public domain pieces. Unlike many offers on the internet, this approach guarantees that we offer a responsible platform that respects artists’ rights.

Based on your progress and level, Tokatab will suggest the right pieces to work on as in the examples below:

To learn the repertoire pieces you have chosen to work on, you will have the choice between learning them in free mode, at your own pace, or learning them while being accompanied by the app, by your virtual teacher, thanks to a step-by-step piece learning scenario.

Challenges to Review and Apply New Concepts While Having Fun

Dozens of challenges are accessible in the “challenge” tab of the app.

Musical challenges are excerpts from repertoire pieces that directly integrate concepts you will have explored in exercises, which will allow you to review gestures being acquired. Sometimes, the app even relies on these challenges to help you discover and train to master certain specific musical techniques.

The playful aspect of challenges lies largely in the fact that you often play part of the piece with one hand, while listening to the other part played, as if a teacher were by your side to play the rest of the piece. It’s an interactive and very musical way of learning, which requires particular attention to rhythm and enriches the learning experience. And you play beautiful music at the same time.

Myriam, one of the first Tokatab users talks about it in feedback she gave us:

“Perfect!!! I tried everything that was recommended but when you’re not familiar with reading notes on a staff, there aren’t many choices. I recommend Tokatab. A very progressive methodology for someone like me who’s resuming or for novices. It’s the happiness of being accompanied by a small orchestra, with a melody that motivates to progress on longer and more elaborate parts with beautiful music”

Conclusion

To summarize, Tokatab can be much more than just an app to learn piano; it can become your daily musical companion!

With varied resources, Tokatab helps you progress, whether you play for pleasure or to surprise loved ones who don’t know your new pianist talents!

Regularly, we regularly add new resources so you always have something new to explore that you like.

The app combines technology and musical tradition to provide you with a complete experience that respects artists’ rights, while remaining fun and accessible. So, if you’re ready to enrich your musical life, Tokatab is there to make each practice session pleasant and productive.

Get ready to have fun and marvel in music with Tokatab by your side!

One last testimonial we were pleased to read and that motivates us to offer you the best resources:

“I got into a routine. I now know that on Wednesdays and weekends I’ll sit at my piano to follow my lessons. It’s very rewarding to see progress each time I connect to Tokatab. Piano practice also allows me to calm down, like a form of meditation.” Guillaume

Ready to transform your piano learning? Join Tokatab now and discover all our resources to progress at your own pace, while having fun!