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Happy New Year! The Piano Learning Revolution has begun!

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Learn how to play like a pro, Composing, Improvising!Happy 2008!!!

We wanted to thank everyone that supported us until now- and in the name of the whole team- wish you a wonderful New Year with lots of Piano learning! 🙂

And here’s some great news for you: these last two months have been of intense amounts of work with lots of progress and new features!

You’re going to love this:
We’ve expanded our database to cover all the most used chords, scales, intervals, and harmonies throughout the Whole World!

Believe it or not, you’ll now be able to explore all the chords, scales, and harmonies used for all the Western and Eastern Music.

Think about it, you’ll be able to master all the music styles of your choice: Jazz, Blues, Rock, Pop, Classical, Flamenco, Spanish, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arabic, and the list goes on! And we don’t stop there, you’ll get to explore all the exotic chords and scales you can think of -and we’ll keep adding content with our constant updates.

But before I jump into details, let me say this: not only you’ll be able to learn what scales or chords do music styles have in common, but you’ll be able also to compose or improvise any melody -on any music style you like- by using the Harmony Dictionary.

Believe me, you’ll just need to choose a music style from a list, and the Harmony Dictionary will show you what chords to play, and what notes you should play in your melody lines during each of those chords, so that your composition or improvisation sounds like that music style you just love- call it Jazz, blues, Classical Indian music, Western Classical Music, or a Rock music piece. Not only you’ll be able to look at all the keyboard diagrams and listen to those harmonies and chord progressions, but you’ll also be able to print them in a practical print-friendly format so that you can practice them at your piano.

Most important of all, the lessons will teach you *how to* harmonize any scale, and all the music theory concepts behind it.

But, that’s only half of the story… for each scale or chord entry, you’ll be able to explore all the different used equivalent names, their history and origin. For example did you know that the Major Scale is also called “Ionian” Scale (as known by the Church Modes) or that in Indian Classical Music the Major Scale is also used, but by the name of “Mela Dhirasankarabharana, or even that in Ethiopian Music this common scale is called “A Raray”? Stated a little differently, this means that no matter your musical background, you’ll be able to find any chord and scale you want, using any of the different culture’s names. And you’ll enjoy yourself when you’ll discover that *that* scale you didn’t know, was just the same as one of the scales you already knew but with a different name. For example, did you know that the famous “Jazz Minor” Scale is just a different name for the Melodic Minor Ascending Scale?

More important than that, for each entry we have included practical tips from expert composers and musicians, which will tell you *how* to combine those chords and scales to make professional compositions -according to each music style.

If you’re an experienced piano player, or if you frequent music stores you must have noted those Chord and Scale dictionaries, each having in the cover a different musical style: “Jazz Chord Dictionary”, “Blues Chord Dictionary”, or even “Rock Chord Dictionary”. Sadly, if you look at the index of any two of those books, you’ll discover that they share about 80% (!) of the same content, even thought they are two separate books! Can this be true? Well this should be no surprise for advanced musicians, as of course, all music styles are related, but it really is a big surprise for the firm that receives the triple amount of money and the victim that has bought the three books with 80% repeated content. Well forget all about that, as with The Piano Encyclopedia you’ll get a concise learning experience that will let you explore all musical styles: you’ll be able to explore Jazz’s, Blues’, Rock’s, Indian’s, Jewish’s, Chinese’s (or whatever to other style you like) Chord, Scale, and Harmony dictionaries with just a mouse click, and learn what do all have in common!

Make no mistake, this is the first time a Chord Dictionary, Scale Dictionary, Interval Dictionary, and Harmony Dictionary, are combined into just one product -and interactively explaining the relationships between each of these components. One thing I want to stress, is that 90% of pianists do not know that there exists an intrinsic relationship between chords and scales, intervals and chords, and scales and harmonies. Seriously, put some thought into this, with The Piano Encyclopedia you’ll learn all these music components at once, their relationship, and how to use them to play professionally, learn composition and improvisation.

Oh Wait! I almost forgot! There’s even more new stuff, we just finished developing a Chord, Interval, and Scale Finder. Yes, you read that right, different from many others, it’s a Chord, Interval, and Scale Finder- all together! That means that you’ll be able to input the notes and the The Piano Encyclopedia Finder will tell you if you’re playing an interval, a chord, or a scale, and all the information you need to know about it. Even if the notes are not part of our database, the finder will analyze the chord or scale throughout a structural and harmonical analysis. You think I’m lying, don’t you? No… we have really incorporated intelligent algorithms that will analyze any chords or scales you input, as well as a professional musician would do.

I’m not kidding, this means that -for example- you’ll be able to view all the inversions and voicing of even an unknown chord, explore it’s musical structure and it’s relation with musical intervals, and even learn how to combine it harmonically with other existent chords to create new chord progressions -by just entering a chord in your computer! Imagine using this tool for your own compositions…

So let me summarize and review; the current developed features are:

  • Intervals -> every interval explained, as well as their relation with chords and scales.
  • Scales -> about every scale on the planet and in every root
  • Chords -> all standard chords and even all of the strange and exotic chords, full of expert’s tips for composing and improvising.
  • Harmony -> the harmonization of every existent scales, categorized by musical style
  • Compose & Improvise-> all chords that can be used with a certain scale, typical chord progressions, and chord substitutions.
  • Interval, Chord & Scale Finder -> if you don’t know what you are playing, simply let the finder help you. Just input the notes and finder tells you what scale, chord, or interval you are playing.
  • And Much More…

By now, you’re probably wondering if this will work for you…
It turns out that this learning experience has been designed both for people that know only piano basics as well as for intermediate and advanced piano players. You’ll be able to decide on what topics to learn, what scales and harmonies to explore, and their level of difficulty, as the experience will take you from the very basics up to mastering professionals levels.

I know you’re probably skeptical. Right? You want to see how it works right now?!

Be one of the first to try The Piano Encyclopedia, subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll send you an invitation *as soon* as the beta version is launched!

To stay in tune with the latest updates, check out the community room,
we’re always looking for contributors and welcome new suggestions,
so feel free to leave messages and tell us more about you.

Cheers!

Rod

P.S: Just as a quick refresher, you didn’t happen to miss The Preview?

BE ONE OF THE FIRST TO TRY IT OUT

See for yourself: Sign-Up to our Mailing List Today
and we’ll send you an invitation as soon as it’s ready!

3 Responses to Happy New Year! The Piano Learning Revolution has begun!

  1. sounds interesting…
    I assume since you mention arabic music that the keyboard includes basic quartertone intervals also: E half-flat, B half-flat, F half-sharp, etc?
    let me know… thanks, cameron

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  2. Rod says:

    Hi Cameron!
    As of today, we’ve included all the Arabic scales that can be played in the Equal Tempered Keyboard (the common Western keyboard) as well as dozens of scales from the Eastern Culture. Moreover, each entry includes rich tips from professional musicians about how to use them for composing and improvising.

    Here are some random examples of the Exotic scales contained in our database: the 72 Indian Melakarta Scales from South Indian Classical Music, the 10 ‘parent’ Theeth Scales widely used in Pakistan and Northern India, Maqam’s, Raga’s, Jewish, Egyptian, Persian, Hawaiian, Javaneese, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and the list goes on! Now consider what happens if you input an unknown scale in the Piano Encyclopedia Finder, not only you’ll get diagrams of the scales in all tonalities, but the Finder will show you how to Harmonize the unknown scale and build chord progressions; as well as analyze it’s modes and explore it’s similarity with other scales.

    Regarding micro-tonality and quartertone intervals, we’ll consider including them in the near future if people become very interested in learning Arabic music -or any music with intervals less than the semitone.

    I hope this answer was useful. 🙂
    Cameron, stay in touch and tell me more about yourself!

    Cheers! 😀
    Rod

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  3. Rod,
    Thanks! Best of luck! Looks like a great product!
    And thanks for the appreciation about my cross-cultural musical work!
    Cameron

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