Rocket Piano Review
You might have seen ads for the Rocket Piano course a few times if you’ve been visiting piano or keyboard-related sites. Having tried it myself over the past few months thanks to the many positive reviews around, I can say that it’s definitely well worth the money. Here’s my own personal review of it.
Rocket Piano Review – What is Rocket Piano?
First, what is the Rocket Piano course? It’s essentially a set of books and audio/videos created by a group of piano teachers who have a total combined experience of 30 years teaching, playing and performing. It is supposed to help you self-learn the piano or keyboard. It’s advertised as being suitable for beginners, intermediate players and even advanced players.
The material in the Rocket Piano course is actually available in 2 different formats: one in softcopy (downloadable PDF ebooks and MP4 video/audio files that you can save to your computer directly), and the other in hardcopy (physical books and DVDs/CDs). At the moment of writing, the softcopy is available for less than $40, while the hardcopy version is available for nearly $200.
Hardcopy version of the Rocket Piano course, consisting of physical books, DVD and CDs
There is absolutely no difference between the content in the softcopy and the content in the hardcopy versions. You are, essentially, paying for the convenience of having the books printed out and the videos/audio all easily accessible via DVD/CD. If you do not quite like reading ebooks or watching videos from your computer screen, the hardcopy version will likely be ideal for you. Otherwise, the softcopy should more than suffice, as it did for me. You can always purchase the softcopy version first to “test it out” and then upgrade to the hardcopy later if you prefer that. And yes, the hardcopy version does ship internationally, and it may come with additional shipping and handling fees for some countries.
Rocket Piano Review – Pros
1. Inexpensive
As mentioned in my previous post regarding offline versus online keyboard courses, one of the main advantages of online keyboard or piano courses like Rocket Piano is their relatively inexpensive price. A single private piano lesson can easily cost upwards of $40-$100 depending on where you live. In contrast, the entire Rocket Piano course containing beginner through intermediate to advanced lessons is available for a one-time-fee of less than $40! Even the hardcopy version is well worth the price considering the price of private lessons.
2. 60-day money back guarantee
Once again, as I’ve brought up in my previous post, another advantage of online keyboard courses is that they often come with a full money-back guarantee. Rocket Piano offers a 60-day full money back guarantee, making it a no-risk purchase.
A note: if you purchase the hardcopy version of Rocket Piano and want to request a refund, you will first need to deliver the entire hardcopy set back to Rocket Piano (you can find more information including the return address on the Rocket Piano site).
3. In-depth, structured and easy to understand
The books are highly structured. You start off with the “Beginners Book” and then proceed to “Intermediate Book” and finally move on to “Advanced Book”. In between, you can switch to the “Introduction to Jazz Piano Book” or the “Introduction to Gospel Piano Book” (you should have at least completed the “Beginners Book” before moving on to these books). Finally, there’s the “Fingering Technique & Exercises Book” which features a bunch of exercises designed to improve your accuracy and finger speed.
To give you an idea of how in-depth the course is, the “Beginners Book” alone is a goldmine of information with a total count of 167 pages. Don’t worry, there’re plenty of diagrams/sheet music notes; it’s not all just words! From this single book, you’ll learn: piano facts & history, the correct posture for piano playing, basic reading of sheet music, musical intervals, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, introduction to chords, minors, scales and arpeggios, along with plenty of practice tunes as well as popular songs that help you easily understand the concepts. As you read the book, you’ll come across video/audio indicators which signify that you should stop and watch/listen to the indicated video or audio (for instance, the section on correct sitting position is accompanied by a video with further explanation and example). The videos add a welcome human element, as they feature Ruth Searle, an Australian classicaly-trained pianist. Not having been exposed much to the Aussie accent before this, I was initially having a little difficulty figuring out some of the words she was saying, but it doesn’t take long to get used to the accent. 
If chords, minors, scales and arpeggios sound like complete gibberish to you, don’t worry. The “Beginners Book” does a great job of introducing the concepts gradually, in a language easily understandable by children.
You can learn more about each book by checking out the main Rocket Piano site.
4. Free bonuses
When I purchased the Rocket Piano course a few months back, it did not initially offer as many free bonuses as it does now (note: I did get access to the new bonuses when they became available). At the time of writing, it currently has 6 free bonuses including helpful software such as games to help you improve sight reading of sheet music, and 60-day free access to SongPond where you can view videos of professional music instructors guiding you to play songs from popular artists such as Elton John, Diana Ross and Carole King.
The Rocket Piano website itself does a good job of explaining the bonuses. As far as I’m aware, all the software bonuses work fine on both PC and Mac, though don’t take my word on that since I’m not a heavy Mac-user.
5. Lifetime access to all updates
The purchase of Rocket Piano comes with FREE lifetime access to all updates. I’ve already mentioned how I’ve seen this in action myself, with new bonuses being immediately available to me after my initial purchase. With the lifetime access to all updates, you can be assured that you won’t have to pay any additional cent for any future bonuses and any new additions or changes to the course.
Rocket Piano Review – Cons
1. Lack of guidance on what to open or download first
My main criticism of the Rocket Piano course is the lack of guidance on what to download or open first once you’ve purchased the softcopy version. Perhaps I’m just stupid or missed something since I haven’t heard anyone else complain about this, but from my experience, you are immediately presented with a page full of links to other pages to download your material including bonuses after your purchase, with little to no indication as to what should be downloaded/opened first. Talk about information overload!
As I’ve figured out though, start off with the FIRST video lesson, THEN the “Beginners Book” and progress in the way I mentioned earlier, opening the videos and audio files as needed. Once you’ve started, it’s very easy to figure out where to go next. Oh, and you’re going to need at least 500 MB of free space if you intend to download all the files at once. I do recommend downloading everything instead of having to log into the Rocket Piano site and streaming the files when you need them. Just my personal preference. Downloading everything takes a while, so you can tinker around with the bonus software (oh, you should probably download those first too) in the meantime, or watch the 5 helpful Q&A videos.
2. Manual opening of video/audio files
My next minor criticism is the manual opening of the videos and audio files. I wish they had linked the files directly from the ebook PDF themselves, instead of getting us to manually locate and open the indicated numbered video/audio file. I did get used to doing this after a while, nonetheless.
It’s interesting to note that purchasing the hardcopy version in the beginning would likely have eliminated both of my complaints. Oh well, it was outside my budget at the time.
Rocket Piano Review – The Bottomline
Being a relative novice to the keyboard/piano myself and having only tried out the course for a few months now, I can’t testify to its effectiveness for advanced players, but if you are a complete beginner, or even an intermediate player, even with little to no music theory background, you will absolutely find the Rocket Piano course immensely helpful in your musical journey, as I did. You will quickly be able to play tunes within a week (depending on how dedicated you are at learning, of course) and gradually learn to sight-read sheet music (I’m still no expert, but I can definitely say I’ve progressed quite a bit) and even play by ear. Structure learning is essential for beginners wanting to self-learn, and this course is perfect for that.
Of course, the best online piano/keyboard course in the world won’t help much if you don’t have the self-discipline or passion to actually learn/self-study. So make sure you set aside some time, at least 1-2 hours a week for a start, and be committed to going through the Rocket Piano course in that amount of time. Don’t get distracted by anything else in that period of time! I will admit I was guilty of this in the beginning, but I’ve finally managed to stop procrastinating and get some real progress. (By the way, I absolutely recommend you print out the “Progress Tracker” from the first few pages of each book. It will help you track your progress and keep you motivated and not get overwhelmed by the amount of information as you tick off the lessons and skills you’ve learnt and mastered.)
Overall, I highly recommend the Rocket Piano course if you have any interest in learning the keyboard/piano, especially in the classical, formal structured style used by many piano teachers around the world, without having to spend a fortune on lessons. Ideal for young kids too! With the 8-week or 60-day full money-back guarantee, there is absolutely no risk on your part. For the price of less than a single private piano/keyboard lesson, you get a complete course that can take you from complete beginner to expert level. To me, that is most definitely a worthwhile investment.
For current pricing information, click here.
Filed under: Rocket Piano review.
