After a long stint with Melodics, researching alternatives, and trying out Yousician, I ultimately settled on Musora; which is a vastly different service! It’s not a gamified app, but instead an immense library of learning resources.

The main reasons it won out for me are:

Teaching a man to fish

The emphasis on learning methodology; notably unlocking the skills for improv, reading theory, and mechanical skills.

Musora not being app-based a-la Rock Band (which I love and was a foundational part of my musical journey) forces you to actually learn the pieces and skills to work outside the app. It’s a subtle but importance difference!

If you’re playing a game, you’re learning the skills to complete levels (songs/lessons, in this case). But if it’s a traditional class structure with assignments done “at home”, you’re learning the skills to perform, read music, improv. And you’re building the systems for how you develop those skills.

In essence, along with the nuts & bolts, Musora subtly makes you decide how you want to approach music. How much time & effort you devote to it; what your goals are; where you’re going to focus.

The breadth of material!

There’s quite literally years of solid, valuable material to learn from. The price/value proposition is ridiculous. And not just songs or the guided course, small mini-lessons about techniques, physiology to improve posture and avoid pain, style lessons for different levels of experience.

Their songs approach works better than covers

Musora takes a great approach for building out a song library: they embed YouTube videos with backing-tracks alongside digital sheet music, with custom playback & practice controls.

This means that rather than the sheer scaling problems Melodics, Yousician, etc. face of filling out their libraries; Musora has less work and cost by transcribing their music and relying on the real tracks. It makes practice much more dynamic and fun; and again, you’re learning the skills to read sheet music & practice through it for contemporary music!