Playground Sessions 2.0!

We are excited to announce the release of Playground Sessions version 2.0! This version includes many improvements and bug fixes. Here are the details:

New Lesson Player

We completely revamped our Lesson Player to better use screen space and give users better visualization of their progress

  • New Lesson Player Section Navigation
    • Shows all sections in great detail
    • Easily see which lesson & section you are on.
    • Shows complete / incomplete status of each section
    • Shows user’s best accuracy
    • Has two modes: open and close, to allow users to better use Playground with different screen sizes.
  • New Lesson Player Toolbar
    • Newly designed icons / functionality.
    • Easily see which lesson & section you are on.
    • We moved all functionality into one easy to use toolbar – no more hunting to find a feature.
    • Newly added Next / Previous buttons to easily navigate sections
    • Can now set custom tempos.
    • Shortcuts for quickly jumping into progress visualizations, settings, or printing.
    • Can now record in practice mode and / or use metronome in performance mode.
  • Sheet Music
    • Now can zoom with ctrl / cmd + mousewheel.
    • Larger display to fit more notation on the screen.
    • Fixed issue with collapsing and expanding panels.
    • Piano Demo is no longer played with high velocity & staccato
    • Slow accompaniments no longer have issue with start position
    • Improved performance.
  • Scoring
    • Now users can earn a max of 3 stars per song.
    • Performance mode no longer has very high scores.
    • New “level reached” prompt.
    • New “badge awarded” prompt.

OGG & FLAC Accompaniments

  • Users can now select from 5 different bit rates:
    • OGG (44 kbps)
    • OGG (128 kbps), this is the new default
    • OGG (320 kbps)
    • FLAC (lossless)
    • WAV (lossless)
  • Dramatically smaller disk requirements per lesson.
  • Dramatically faster downloads.

Installation / Login

  • Multiple users can now log in on the same computer.
  • No more license key required.
  • No more slow sync process, making login time very quick!
  • Sound Effects!

Dashboard

  • New offline mode display.
  • New level / point display in top right corner.
  • New “return to lesson” display in bottom left.
  • Removed banners from features.
  • Reorganized tabs, including new in-app forums tab.

Scoring / Badges

  • Rebuilt badge system to more accurately award and record badges.
  • New leveling system.
  • Performance mode now gives similar points to practice.
  • 3 stars instead of 5.

Bootcamp Tab

  • Improved navigation between Rookie, Intermediate, Advanced Bootcamps.
  • Now displays number of completed sections in tile.
  • Now shows check mark when lesson is complete.
  • New left side menu shows all sections and allows user to pick which section they would like to enter.

My Songs Tab

  • Now displays number of completed sections in tile.
  • Now shows stars when full song has been performed.
  • New left side menu shows all sections and allows user to pick which section they would like to enter.
  • Now shows greater detail about lesson difficulty.

Song Store Tab

  • We now accept PayPal!
  • New song layout page.
  • Can now select billing profile.
  • New “select a membership” page.

Let us know what you think about the update in our forum: https://playgroundsessions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=5547

And keep an eye out for more updates coming in the near future!

1 thought on “Playground Sessions 2.0!”

  1. Doug Robinson

    This may already be common knowledge, but it was new to me.
    Last night, I discovered that it is possible to select a passage in a lesson, and play just that passage. i.e. in a lesson of whatever number of bars, it is possible to select any one or more bars, in order to concentrate your efforts, e.g. on a difficult passage.
    This is quite helpful in general, but especially when there are a number of bars that are easy, and a few that are difficult.

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