This is designed to teach people to play a keyboard in their own home, at their own rate.
It involves a Yamaha E303 5-octave instrument which is available from any good music retailer, plus our talking box which attaches to the Yamaha. We program the box to sense key values, velocities and timings and give you instant feedback on accuracy and technique, while teaching you 20 tunes.
Release date is early April 2006.
The current list of tunes for this first course is: Ode to Joy, Love Me Tender, Mexican Hat Dance, Good King Wenceslas, Jingle Bells, Brother John, Going Home, Mary Anne, When the Saints go Marching In, Money Can't Buy Everything, Beautiful Brown Eyes, Waltz Time, Happy Birthday, Alouette, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Joy to the World, On Top of Old Smokey, Greensleeves, Theme from the Lion King, and When Irish Eyes are Smiling. The list may change or extend as we develop the course.
Subsequent courses will extend the repertoire by 20-odd songs each, for about $100 per course. Courses are supplied on digital memory cards and can be easily swapped in and out of our box.
The courses teach theory and scales as well as tunes, making it much more than just a "learn-by-rote" toy.
In the future, we plan to offer a reprogrammed version of the talking box that will turn the instrument into a 16-channel sequencer, allowing budding composers to write their own music.
We also plan to release a package that will let you scan any piece of music and have it read to you as notes, so that you can learn it independently.
The speaking unit communicates with the Yamaha keyboard through its MIDI ports.
The Yamaha keyboard features fully tactile controls and will be described in detail in an accompanying CD.
It synthesises 121 different instruments, covering pianos, organs, accordians, guitars, basses, other strings, choirs, saxaphones, trumpets, other brass, flutes, synthesisers and drum kits.
It offers 106 styles of backing rythm. It extends the range of accompaniments from those supplied with our courses, to full orchestral backing.
Technical Data (Keyboard):
Technical Data (Speech Unit):
Price: $ 330 (approx) keyboard incl GST. $ 330 Speech Unit, no GST. P&P approx $ 60 (or, buy the keyboard locally and pay just $ 10 for shipping the Speech Unit and power packs).