Stavely
Five minutes a day
Stop counting lines up from the bottom
Reading music should be a reflex, not arithmetic. Stavely shows you a note, you press the key, and spaced repetition decides when you see it again.
Free with the treble clef. Stavely Pro: €2.99 a month or €14.99 a year, three days free to try, cancel any time.
Which note is this?
Correct — back again in 10 minutes
Spaced repetition you can recite
Most apps hide their scheduling behind a model nobody can inspect. Stavely’s is five rungs. Right, and a note climbs one. Wrong, and it drops to the bottom. No daily quota — just the notes that are due.
1
1 min
2
10 min
3
1 day
4
2 days
5
5 days
Not our theory. Somebody else’s decades of it.
Stavely does two things: it makes you produce the answer yourself, and it spreads those attempts over days. Those are the two techniques that keep coming first when researchers rank them.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013
Ten study methods reviewed. Two came out on top.
Dunlosky and colleagues assessed the ten techniques students actually use — highlighting, rereading, summarising. Eight rated moderate or low. The two rated high: practice testing and distributed practice.
Dunlosky et al., PSPI 14(1)
Psychological Bulletin, 2006
839 comparisons, and spacing kept winning.
Cepeda and colleagues pooled 839 assessments from 317 experiments across 184 articles. Spreading practice out beat cramming it into one sitting, consistently.
Cepeda et al., Psych. Bulletin 132(3)
Neither paper is about the piano. They are about memory — holding on to something you have to recall on demand. Naming a note is exactly that. Playing the instrument is a different kind of learning, and Stavely does not claim to teach it.
Every note, both clefs
Treble and bass, white keys and black — 71 in all. Each one tracked separately, so the hard ones come round more often. The treble clef is free; the bass clef comes with Stavely Pro.
Sixty seconds, when you want a test
A timed challenge with random clefs, streak bonuses and a leaderboard. Separate from your schedule, so it never disturbs your progress. Part of Stavely Pro.
You can see exactly where you are
Accuracy and speed for every note, and a deck view showing when each is next due. Nothing is hidden from you.
Phone and browser, one account
Practise on the train, pick up at your desk. A note answered on one device is answered on both.
For parents
Your kids might just be the next Mozart
Whatever your kids turn out to be, it starts with reading the notes — and that is the part children quit over: dull to drill, pure memorisation, and until it is automatic every piece is a puzzle before it is music. It is also the one part a phone is genuinely good at, so it can be done on the way to school.
Ads, but never while they practise
The free version shows ads between the practice, never during it: in the apps one as a session ends, rated by Google as suitable for all ages, and in the browser banners on the statistics and deck pages. No analytics, no tracking pixels. Stavely Pro has no ads at all.
Encouragement you can switch off
A daily streak and one reminder a day, only when notes are actually due, and both switch off with a tap in Settings. A day with nothing due still counts, so the streak never punishes a break the schedule gave them. No loot boxes, no daily quota.
The account is yours
Your email, and a subscription only if you want Pro. Stavely is not directed at children under 13, and the leaderboard shows a display name publicly — so pick one that is not their real name.
We cannot promise you a prodigy. What we can promise is that in a few weeks they will stop counting lines up from the bottom — and that is the bit that makes practice stop hurting.
Free to start. Pro when you want more.
The treble clef is free, with ads. Stavely Pro adds the bass clef, the 60-second challenge and learning offline, and removes the ads: €2.99 a month or €14.99 a year, three days free first. The same account works in the browser and on your phone.
Available now in the browser. The iOS and Android apps are on the way.
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