Interactive lessons. The Beginner stage is eleven short lessons, from finding C to reading both clefs, with your hands, a steady beat, rests, sharps and flats, and soft and loud along the way. One small idea at a time, something to play straight away, and it listens to every note. Stuck? It names the note, then lights the key. Beginner is free, and more stages are on the way, with the full version. The Beginner check rounds off the stage. No help at all, and it counts from the day after your last lesson, so you know it stuck. Four new achievements come with the lessons, and Well Read is yours when you finish the stage. The Handbook, rewritten for someone who knows nothing yet, each page matched to its lesson and starting with Getting started. Pictures on every page: keyboards you can tap, staff examples with the same notes lit on the keys, a Hear it button, and the lessons' own beat line and loudness meter. A Glossary: every word the lessons use, in one plain line. Search it (crotchet and semibreve work too), and jump to the lesson or page that teaches it. Your next lesson waits on Home until you finish Beginner. Show me where. Every Train mode offers to light the key you are looking for, and the black keys that find it, after a miss or five quiet seconds. Nothing lights until you ask, and exams stay unaided. Every note is read correctly. Some bars of Fantaisie-Impromptu and Paganini's Caprice 24 were silently missing and now play in full. Descending melodic minor is spelled right, two-hand scales no longer carry one hand's sharp into the other, and chords and intervals sit on their staff instead of far below it. Siege for beginners. A new Novice watch sends one note at a time, on the staff, white keys first, with longer to read it, and its bosses play their battle themes one note a bar. It is a practice watch: a quarter of the XP, and no trophies or achievements. New players start there. And the Gate is redesigned: cleaner, calmer, and it tells you what each choice means. And a hand's next note stays within a sixth of its last, so no more wild leaps. The on-screen keyboard reaches every note a mode asks for and fits the games' column. The pressed-notes card no longer cuts off notes far above or below the staff, long Scale Patterns runs draw at full size, and the metronome is a little louder.

Practice notices where you stumble. Miss the same bar three times and it offers to loop it for you. Switch on "Start over on a miss" and a wrong note takes you back to the top, or to the start of your loop. Scale for this piece. The key your score is in now sits beside its title: tap it and Scale Patterns opens on that scale, ready to drill. Scales with both hands. Play hands together or in contrary motion from the grand staff, with fingering for both hands. Or pick one key and drill just that one. See what you played against what was written. Miss a note and the pressed-notes card shows yours in red next to the right one in green, until you play again. The card can now show both staves, and it stays up after you let go. Harmony Compass, rebuilt. Play with one hand or two (left hand on the root), and it tells you when a voice leaps instead of moving smoothly. Navigate gives you a destination and lets you choose the route. Staff mode writes each chord out to read. Notes are spelled the way the music means them. An E major scale shows sharps, a B major chord is B, D sharp, F sharp, and progressions are written in their key with the key signature. Minor progressions and journeys now say minor. Fairer drills. Key Signatures tells you whether it wants the major or the minor key. Intervals no longer prints the root under the staff, and shows the interval written out once you answer. Note Flashcards puts each note on the clef that suits it. Blitz and Cascade now read both clefs, with a wider range and sharps and flats on Hard. Scale and Arpeggio drills can start over on a miss too, and a wrong note no longer makes the progress line flicker. Scales and the Harmony Compass have new, harder settings, so the top ranks there now ask a little more. Exams you have already taken keep their rank. Better on iPad and smaller screens: the combo meter tucks into the header, long setup rows wrap instead of being cut off, and nothing shifts when you miss. Reset all progress now clears Siege and every score.

Siege is here, in Games. A tower defence you play by reading: enemies march on the keep carrying music, and every passage you play right fires a shot. Endless waves, each in its own key, seven bosses with battle themes you play bar by bar, and a card to pick after every wave. Between runs, the keep is yours. Spend skill points in the Armoury on upgrades that change how a run is built, check your best wave for every clef and key in the Watchtower, and visit every boss you have felled in the Crypt. A level for everything you play. Every correct note earns XP in any mode, and your level sits on the Dashboard. Exam ranks, rebuilt. A rank now measures points a minute against a par for each mode, so Maestro means the same in every mode. Your old exams have been re-rated on the new scale. 42 new achievements, all of them earned in Siege. If the iPad puts MidiSlayer in portrait or a small window, it now asks you to turn back to landscape instead of squashing the screen. Bigger tap targets in Siege, and no tooltips that need a mouse.