Learning to play the piano by yourself isn’t easy. There are apps that can tell you which notes you hit, but they rarely analyze the way your hands move, whether your posture is working against you, or why a passage feels awkward.
This is one of the reasons human teachers have been such an advantage when it comes to learning to play an instrument. However, the one place human teachers fall short? They aren’t always available. You may have a class or two each week, but what about those moments when a wave of practice motivation strikes?
Music tech company ROLI believes it may have a new solution: an AI Music Coach that can see your hands, listen to what you play, and respond in real time. It’s a shift from passive feedback – and slightly more advanced versions of it like that offered by the ROLI Piano – toward active guidance, launching first for piano learning alongside ROLI’s new Airwave hardware.
ROLI
Sitting at the core of ROLI’s new system is a sensing layer that goes beyond just listening for the right notes. An infrared hand-tracking camera watches both hands in real time, tracking all of each hand’s 27 joints at 90 frames per second. This means that the AI Music Coach doesn’t just respond to whether you hit the correct keys, but instead, how you play them: finger position, motion, and posture.
There’s a conversational layer on top of this, too. Players can talk to the app, ask questions, and receive guidance that adapts on the fly. Lessons continually adjust their pacing and difficulty, based on what the system sees and hears moment-to-moment. The feedback is immediate, much like a human teacher, and practice paths aren’t locked into rigid, pre-built lesson plans.
This approach sets the AI Music Coach apart from most other music-learning apps, which mainly rely on MIDI note data and fixed exercises. By being able to literally see micro-movements of the player’s hands, the AI can address technique issues that notes alone can’t reveal.
The AI Music Coach is the natural next step in ROLI’s foray into expressive, guided music learning. It builds on its earlier products like the ROLI Piano – and it feels like an organic evolution rather than a pivot.
ROLI
Behind the scenes, the AI Music Coach combines advanced voice models with a deep musical knowledgebase. This foundation allows it to listen, watch, and respond in a way that feels natural and conversational rather than scripted.
The system is tightly integrated across the ROLI ecosystem, rather than as a standalone tool. Accessibility was a key part of the company’s design philosophy: the system supports over 40 languages, and doesn’t require its users to read sheet music. ROLI says that the app has already been tested globally, with beginners and professionals alike using it to refine their practice.
The AI Music Coach is currently slated to launch in public beta within the ROLI Learn app in the coming months, bundled with shipments of the new Airwave hardware. Pricing hasn’t been finalized at the time of writing.
ROLI has been careful not to position the system as a replacement for human teachers, who will always offer a certain touch that no AI can emulate. Instead, the company positions it as a scalable companion that’s always available. The AI Music Coach isn’t a shortcut; it’s a feedback amplifier, allowing music learning that adapts to you, rather than forcing you to adapt to a fixed syllabus.
A first look at ROLI’s AI Music Coach
Source: ROLI
