Every piano app locks you into its licensed catalog. If your teacher assigns a piece the app doesn't have, you're stuck. SnapNotes flips that: photograph any printed sheet music (or import PDF/MIDI/MusicXML) and it becomes a Synthesia-style falling-notes track in seconds. Connect a MIDI keyboard and practice mode scores every note you play. Built-in note editor to fix scan errors, 232 public-domain songs included, no account, no ads β your music stays on your device.
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Maker
π
Hey Product Hunt! Solo dev here π
The problem that started this: I learn piano best from those falling-note videos on YouTube, but the piece I actually needed to practice was never there. The big learning apps only have their licensed catalogs β great if you want to learn what they picked, useless when your teacher hands you paper sheet music. It felt backwards that the music I owned was the music I couldn't practice properly.
So I built SnapNotes: take a photo of any printed sheet music (or import a PDF/MIDI/MusicXML) and it becomes a falling-notes track. Plug in a MIDI keyboard and practice mode scores what you actually play, note by note. There's a note editor for when the scan isn't perfect, and 232 public-domain songs built in β classical, folk, ragtime, Bach β all free of licensing weirdness.
Honest bits: the scanning runs on an open-source OMR engine (Audiveris), so clean printed scores work great, but handwritten or really dense pages can need touch-ups. And there's no pop music in the catalog β that's what scanning your own books is for.
Getting here was a ride. Three App Review rejections, then a server-side App Store Connect bug that left my subscriptions unsellable after launch β I ended up diagnosing it through their private API and rebuilding my subscription setup from scratch. Happy to share that whole saga if anyone's curious, it was character-building lol.
Free to try (few scans + ~116 songs, no account needed). Would love honest feedback β especially from anyone who plays: what would make this part of your actual practice routine?
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π Pixel perfection
honestly the photo-to-falling-notes pipeline is such a clever solve for the locked-catalog problem, and love that everything stays local with no account nonsense.
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@hubert_zenΒ Thank you! The local-first thing was honestly one of the easiest decisions of the whole build. It's a piano practice app, so I thought there's just no reason it needs your email. Your library and practice history are yours, iCloud backup is there if you want it.
Funny thing about the locked-catalog problem, I didn't set out to "solve" it, I just wanted to practice the pieces my teacher gave me and couldn't find an app that did that. Turns out the obvious feature was the missing one.
If you get a chance to try it on real sheet music I'd genuinely love to hear how the scan quality holds up for you.
honestly the photo-to-falling-notes pipeline is such a clever solve for the locked-catalog problem, and love that everything stays local with no account nonsense.
@hubert_zenΒ Thank you! The local-first thing was honestly one of the easiest decisions of the whole build. It's a piano practice app, so I thought there's just no reason it needs your email. Your library and practice history are yours, iCloud backup is there if you want it.
Funny thing about the locked-catalog problem, I didn't set out to "solve" it, I just wanted to practice the pieces my teacher gave me and couldn't find an app that did that. Turns out the obvious feature was the missing one.
If you get a chance to try it on real sheet music I'd genuinely love to hear how the scan quality holds up for you.