Coming May 1st 2013 -FREE- to an iPad Near You!
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Aqwertyan Story & Links
Foundation of Aqwertyan™ Music White Paper “Music is the universal language of mankind.” H.W. Longfellow
FOUNDATION OF THE OPPORTUNITY: Man’s love affair with all things music is omnipresent and transcends language, culture, and geography. A significant aspect of this fascination is the innate desire to play (perform) music. This aspiration is timeless and of universal interest. In addition, the perceived social value, including to a person’s basic education has always been high. Gallup has conducted many polls on mankind’s interest in music. Basically they find that 84% of the adults surveyed indicate that they wished they had learned to play a musical instrument as a child. Even more relevant to the Aqwertyan Solution is that 67% indicate they would still like to learn to play a musical instrument. Also very pertinent is that 38% have read, seen, or heard about the educational benefits of playing a musical instrument and an overwhelming majority, 73%; believe that children should be exposed to music before age 5. Unfortunately these studies consistently find that less than 10% of people actually ever study any form of music and the percentage of adults studying music is even lower. The point here is that although music plays a well-recognized and vital role in society, performing music is an esteemed activity, and that most people yearn to play an instrument, traditional methods of encouraging and facilitating learning a music instrument remain discouragingly unsuccessful. THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY: The Home Entertainment Market, Serious Game Market, and the Tablet Education Markets are the fastest growing software market places in the world today. $Billions are purchase annually and nearly doubling year in year out. Thousands of App Entrepreneurs of all sizes have recognized this opportunity and are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development with the intention of bringing to market novel products that have global appeal, sustained revenue, repetitive sales and a high profit margin. The music software industry based on its high profile and ubiquitous “Universal Language” and vast installed base of users interested in performing music on computing devices has made this a perennial objective and one full of promise. The industry grappled for years in attempts to enable the Desk Top and its ubiquitous Qwerty Keyboard function as a music performance instrument and now the Tablet Market has brought forth dozens of virtual (traditional) instruments and new music interfaces to satisfy the world’s desire to perform music. Karaoke is a great example of the rewards that are possible. By successfully enabling the world’s pent up desire to sing a multibillion dollar industry was born. Virtual Instruments and new music making interfaces on Tablets are truly marvelous however they still fall short of full satisfaction for two important reasons. Virtual instruments most often still require you to learn to read traditional notation and even more demanding a player most still learn new fingering to play. On the other hand new musical interfaces while being extremely creative in composing new types of music (sounds) they fall totally short in satisfying the desire to perform our traditional music and songs. Unfortunately these short comings set most casual wan-a-be players back to square one. There is a solution and it has been hiding in plain sight. Enabling the Qwerty Keyboard as a musical instrument. Everyone already knows how to play it! THE PARADIGM SWITCH: Let’s take advantage of what we have learned already and get on with the joy of playing music! Why should there be a high barrier to entry for one of humankinds most favorite past times. Aqwertyan Music very purposefully works to capitalize on the unconscious neuromuscular (muscle memory) learning made possible by the left-brain. Thus the rapid eye-brain-finger translation (typing) capability that we all use on a daily basis to input information into PCs via a QWERTY style keyboard is preserved. This is the exact same left-brain training that the hard-earned proficiency musicians’ gain from years of practice. Billions of computer users throughout the world have thus become proficient at fingering the QWERTY and Aqwertyan Music now elevates the QWERTY to the status of Universal Keyboard Instrument. Finally, since Aqwertyan Music note instructions are displayed as English alphabetic annotated graphics (and can be in any other local language) there is no prerequisite to learn traditional notation to begin playing rewardingly. Nearly all previous efforts to make the QWERTY musical have floundered on the belief that the QWERTY key to musical note/pitch assignments must remain as fixed relationships (one QWERTY key equals one note or perhaps with the application of the shift key the same note but different octave) or risk a disruptive and fatal cognitive dissonance in the player's mind. Trapped within this mindset these earlier attempts invariably employed key/note relationships that make the fingering, of all but the simplest note sequences, physically and musically unplayable as the players fingers must traverse the whole keyboard. In practical tests the requirement for a fixed relationship proved false and university studies have now substantiated that this is an invalid restraint. What has been shown is that our musical right brains are instead busily focusing on the notes (sounds) being produced and their correctness vis-à-vis a previously learned or expected note progression (song/melody) and not the fact that a particular key may be producing more than one note/pitch. Think of the brain of a concert pianist producing 15-20 notes a second in a demanding piece or what the brain of a touch typist is doing when creating a document. The thought is all about content not the keys. Free of this false constraint, Aqwertyan Music, via its’ patented key/note assignment algorithms produces physically possible fingering on the QWERTY keyboard that can be played in a fluid manner and thus achieved a goal that eluded all previous attempts. This is accomplished by floating (reassigning) the QWERTY key-to-note assignments within a musical piece and not only enables physically possible fingering in all cases but also enables advanced play. Up to eight simultaneous finger depressions are possible. As a result a wide spectrum of music is facilitated and players at all skill levels from beginner to expert can feel a deep sense of accomplishment and enjoyment. Importantly, Aqwertyan algorithms do all of this while preserving the traditional qwerty-key-finger assignments learned for touch-typing. For beginning keyboard users typing proficiency is also a natural and fun byproduct. THE GOAL: A person can read and study music, listen to music, write music, watch movies about the lives and times of musicians and even attend live performances of music, but none of these experiences begin to compare to playing an instrument and of course none of these are of lasting satisfaction to a person that would love to play. The power of Aqwertyan music is in the early success it brings. If a person possesses even a beginning comfort level on the QWERTY keyboard they are immediately afforded a rewarding and captivating experience in being able to perform both their choice of instrument and favorite genre of music. Yet to be seen, but a highly hoped for positive result of the early success experienced by a large population exposed to Aqwertyan Music, will be a quantum leap in the number of individuals developing their music appreciation of a wider spectrum of artists, going on to take up traditional instruments, and even gaining the confidence to go on to composing new music using any number of existing applications that facilitate new music creation. When millions of people around the world are able to easily experience the joy of performing their favorite music... it will undoubtedly be another step in making it a more happy and friendly place!
Jim Fallgatter Founder, Aqwertyan Music
More background information (PC Version):
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