I've been using Synthesia on an old macbook air hooked to my digital piano on and off for a few years. It's really astonishing how quickly you can learn a song when you have instant feedback.
Although this tool is obviously not going to teach me dynamics and expression, I can't recommend it strongly enough for people looking to learn to play the piano by themselves.
Hmm, I tried Synthesia but found it unworkable. I have some basic skills at sight-reading and can play a bit by reading intervals. I found that this didn't work in Synthesia at all, and that I totally struggle to hit notes reliably. Combine this with the sheet music display in Synthesia being crap, and it got frustrating pretty quickly.
So I'm back to simply playing from sheet music. Feedback isn't a problem - you can hear when music sounds like shit pretty easily, and Synthesia isn't going to correct your technique mistakes anyway.
Comparing it to something like Rocksmith, I think I'm missing the display of where your hand should be anchored.
I don't want to be "that guy" but is publishing notation and tabs for copyrighted songs OK? I thought many "Guitar Tab" websites disappeared from the internet exactly because it isn't.
The problem with Guitar Hero was not the music (bad as it often was), but the instruments. The idea that you can learn anything about playing music by pressing plastic buttons on some chintzy toy is — well, akin to the idea that you can learn to read by watching television. But people buy into it because it is so seductive.
Good looking site, though, and I wish it success. I developed a little training app for MIDI about twenty years ago (in Visual Basic), and although I didn't find it very helpful, I hope this kind of tool is useful for some learners.
But then, you do have a limited library on Rocksmith. And you have to install stuff on your PC or have a console, plus getting the guitar adapter. Jellynote is more ready-to-go. Kind of like a Spotify of sheet music.
http://www.soundslice.com/scores/auld-lang-syne/