Why Diven built a free, open source music practice app

The curriculum for each instrument is a real prerequisite graph, not a list of levels. A skill tree resolver checks each skill's prerequisites and only offers it once they are actually learned, so the order you meet things in reflects how a skill genuinely builds on what came before, not an arbitrary difficulty ramp. A level system says spend two weeks here, then move on. A prerequisite tree says something more specific: this skill depends on that one, and it will not show up as ready until the dependency is actually there.

Technique drills use BPM laddering: you start under tempo and only step up once you can play a clean run, so speed is earned on top of control instead of bolted on separately. Once a skill is learned it goes on a spaced review schedule at 1, 3, 7, and 14 days, so it keeps coming back instead of quietly fading the moment you have passed it once.

Ear training is gated to what you have actually been taught. It never quizzes an interval, a chord quality, or a progression the tree has not covered yet, so a round is always something you have a real shot at, not a guess. Every musical term in a lesson, a drill, or the glossary is tappable for a plain-language explanation, so nothing assumes vocabulary you have not been given yet.

If you have already tried one of the well-known practice apps, here is honestly where Music Practice is different, and where it is not.

Simply Piano

Simply Piano is a piano-only app, subscription-priced at $13 to $20 a month, that scores how closely you played a song against a reference. Music Practice teaches the skill that lets you play it in the first place. Free and open source, no subscription.

Yousician

Yousician covers piano, guitar, bass, and vocals on a subscription, with gamified scoring and streaks. Music Practice is a real prerequisite curriculum you can see laid out as a skill tree instead of a streak counter. Free and open source, no subscription.

Melodics

Melodics is a pad or MIDI-keyboard rhythm trainer on a subscription, built around sample-based drills. Music Practice teaches drum fundamentals with real lessons and BPM-laddered drills on a practice pad. Free, no login.

flowkey

flowkey is piano-only and subscription-based, teaching specific songs from sheet music. Music Practice builds the fundamentals first and also covers electric guitar and drums. Free and open source.

Justin Guitar app

The Justin Guitar app is guitar-only and mostly video lessons you watch, with a free tier and a paid one. Music Practice is interactive drills with a spaced review system across piano, guitar, and drums. Free throughout, with nothing held back behind a paid tier.

None of this requires an account. Progress is stored in the browser through localStorage, so you can start practicing immediately and it is still there tomorrow. Local-first felt like the right default for a practice tool: the thing you actually need at 9pm on a Tuesday is to open the app and start, not to create a login first. If you want your progress on two devices, an optional sign-in adds cloud sync on top of the same local data. It is opt-in, and the app works completely without it.

The whole codebase is open source under the MIT licence at github.com/astraedus/piano. Read exactly how the skill tree, the review scheduler, and the ear-training gates work instead of taking it on faith.

For the curious: Music Practice is built with Next.js and React in TypeScript, Tone.js for audio, VexFlow for piano and guitar notation, svguitar for chord diagrams, and @xyflow/react with dagre for laying out the skill graph itself. The instrument-specific logic is small and sits behind one shared skill tree engine, so adding drums did not mean rewriting how piano or guitar work, only adding a new instrument module and its own set of nodes and drills.

Music Practice is free and open source, built by Diven. If you use it, even for five minutes, tell me what confused you or what you wished it did next, especially if you are partway through learning an instrument and bounced off something here. The repo is open and issues are welcome at github.com/astraedus/piano/issues.