Meet Sight Staff — Daily five-minute note reading drill

Education

Sight Staff

Daily five-minute note reading drill.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What Sight Staff does

Sight Staff is the offline sight-reading trainer for the 10 million US adults learning piano — the demographic Piano Marvel's $290 subscription locks out, Tenuto's 24 fixed drills bore, and Notevision's middle-C-equals-octave bug has frustrated for years.

What Sight Staff does:

— A daily 5-minute streak. A note appears on the staff. Tap the matching key on the keyboard at the bottom. Right answer plays the note. Wrong answer shows the correct key for half a second. — Adaptive per-note mastery. Each pitch on each clef has an Elo-style score. The app shows the notes you're worst at twice as often as the ones you've nailed. — Treble + bass + alto + tenor clefs. Switch clefs in a tap. Practice for ABRSM, RCM, or just to get faster at chamber music. — Ledger lines + accidentals. Up to four ledger lines above/below, sharps, flats, naturals. Difficulty unlocks as you master the easier notes. — Beautiful staff rendering. Drawn in SwiftUI Canvas — crisp on every iPhone screen. — Optional piano sounds. A bundled grand piano sample plays each note you correctly identify. AVAudioEngine, on-device, no streaming. — Daily streak that doesn't punish. Miss a day, your mastery scores stay. No "streak lost" guilt. — No account, no cloud, no subscription. Free, forever. Your mastery data lives on this phone.

86% of piano teachers say sight-reading is important but only 7% teach it systematically (Hardy study). Sight Staff is what they would have built.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Daily drill — Note on staff → tap matching key; immediate feedback
Clef switcher — Treble / bass / alto / tenor — tap to toggle
Mastery — Per-note Elo score chart across all clefs
Difficulty unlock — Ledger lines + accidentals enabled as mastery rises
Streak — Days drilled — supportive (no streak-lost penalty)

Why we built it

Piano students need daily sight-reading drill but Tenuto has only 24 fixed exercises, Notevision has known audio bugs (middle C and octave register as same note), and Piano Marvel costs $290+ — there's no free, comprehensive, offline alternative.

What makes it different

Sight Staff is the only iOS sight-reading trainer with per-note Elo-style adaptive mastery across treble + bass + alto + tenor clefs + ledger lines + accidentals, drawn in SwiftUI Canvas, with bundled piano samples played via AVAudioEngine entirely on-device — Tenuto is $4.99 with only 24 drills, Notevision has known…

Who it's for

Students, parents helping with homework, and adults who just want a fast answer without an upsell.

In one line: Daily five-minute note reading drill.

Try it

See the Sight Staff app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use Sight Staff, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.