Reading ahead, at a density you choose
You need a MIDI keyboard and Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Opera on a desktop or laptop. Not Safari, not iPad, because Apple does not support Web MIDI and requires every iOS browser to use Safari's engine. Full requirements.
What this is not
Klaviero does not teach staff notation. There is no treble clef, no key signature drill, no flashcard mode. If you need to learn to read printed sheet music, buy a sight-reading app that does that, and come back after.
What Klaviero trains is the other half of sight reading, and it is the half that is harder to practise on your own: reading ahead of your hands at speed, without stopping.
Why density is the variable that matters
Most practice advice tells you to play easier pieces. That is right and it is too vague to act on, because easier usually means fewer notes, and what actually breaks your reading is notes arriving faster than you can process them.
Every chart in Klaviero is measured for exactly that. The figure is the busiest 25 seconds of the piece, in notes per second. It ranges from 2.7 to 31.4 across the library:
| Peak n/s | Notes | Length | Piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.7 | 598 | 4:52 | Satie · Gnossienne No. 3 |
| 4.3 | 456 | 2:07 | Schumann · Träumerei |
| 7.4 | 1,002 | 3:54 | Chopin · Nocturne No. 20 |
| 8.8 | 1,284 | 3:46 | Bach · Prelude in C |
| 11.7 | 1,491 | 4:08 | Debussy · Clair de Lune |
| 16.8 | 2,819 | 3:10 | Mozart · Turkish March |
| 20.6 | 3,172 | 3:07 | Chopin · Winter Wind |
| 31.4 | 4,144 | 4:08 | Liszt · Un Sospiro |
Pick a number just above where you are comfortable. Work there until it stops being hard. Move up one step. That is the whole method and it is only possible because the number exists. The full range for every piece is in the catalogue.
The practice loop
Practice mode holds the chart until you play the note, so you can read at your own pace and nothing punishes hesitation.
Rhythm mode does not wait. Misses count and the combo resets. This is where reading ahead is forced, because if your eyes are on the note your hands are playing, you have already lost.
Set max tries to 1 and a single miss restarts the piece. That is the hardest reading drill in the product and it is brutal in a useful way.
One hand at a time
Play the right hand while Klaviero plays the left. Reading one line at a time at a higher density beats reading two lines badly, and you can move the difficulty independently for each hand by choosing which one you take.