Hi there,

I am learning the piano, and it's...quite hard. It requires, just like everything else, regular practice on a daily basis and strong motivation. To help me achieve that, I'd like to track the time I play the piano each day and get statistics so that I can monitor my training sessions.

I own a ROLAND FP30 and my first idea would be to monitor the sound that is output somehow by the keyboard. An other idea would be to plug a USB MIDI controller that can detect output and thus calculate running time.

Would you have any suggestion on how to do that? Without opening the piano and try to stick my fingers in the electronics would be much appreciated

 

Think about useing a stopwatch. Start it when you start playing. End when you’re done.

Build a circuit to do this.

Or use a microcontroller with two input pins. Start counts the seconds or minutes until you press stop. Output the time.

There’s a lot missing in your description. What’s the minimum time you want to track. Minutes or seconds? How are you going to display the output? When will it display? Do you want the time per use or cumulative over time? How are you going to power this?

 

Why bother?
As with most learning activities, just dedicate a set duration such as 30 minutes to that activity each day.
For example, I set myself to do 1 hour of French, 1 hour of guitar, 30 minutes of piano each day. I don't always do it but at least it's a target.

 

Hi there,

I am learning the piano, and it's...quite hard. It requires, just like everything else, regular practice on a daily basis and strong motivation. To help me achieve that, I'd like to track the time I play the piano each day and get statistics so that I can monitor my training sessions.

I own a ROLAND FP30 and my first idea would be to monitor the sound that is output somehow by the keyboard. An other idea would be to plug a USB MIDI controller that can detect output and thus calculate running time.

Would you have any suggestion on how to do that? Without opening the piano and try to stick my fingers in the electronics would be much appreciated

Use a Sound detector circuit to operate a relay to start an elapsed time meter. Thus the meter will run while notes are playing. That will not provide an accurate measure of practice time, but it will come fairly close. Connect the sound detector to the roland speaker output.