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We interviewed much more than the three people that was mandatory, however not all the interviews were helpful. The interviews that stood out the most are characterized below.
Novice Piano Player
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He noted some interesting things:
- He started to learn piano this late because of lack of access to piano or the instructor.
- Other factors like finger techniques and musical score interpretation were also important
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From the interviews described above, we extracted the following goals.
Introduce complete novices to Piano
Complete novices do not understand how the keys in the keyboard are laid out. A brief introduction to the piano and the difference between notes, chords, etc would be useful to such a user.
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Some of the interviewees, especially beginners, have mentioned that they have delayed learning piano due to the costs associated with buying a piano or having a tutor. As such, it would help them if we could provide music education (especially beginner level) at zero cost. i.e. we want to help the user without requiring that they own any musical instrument or have a tutor.
Enable ear training
Ear training allows the user to be able to play a piece of music the user just listened to. This is a skill desired by a large fraction of the people who want to learn how to play a piano. A number of people who are into learning piano for a few months get stuck at the stage where they have difficulty transitioning from "read and play" to "listen and play".
Make the platform interactive / social
Learning things alone is boring, and it is especially true in the case of music which is such an aesthetic and creative subject. Users have mentioned time and again how a simple right or wrong is not the kind of interaction they want to have, and also how having other people or some interaction makes for a much better experience.
Precise pitch training (optional)
Users have also expressed interest in learning not only the art of distinguishing notes being played on an instrument, but rather also having a tool which would give them feedback on the pitch at which they are singing. However, since real-time pitch analysis is an open problem with its own conference dedicated to it, we have marked this goal as optional.