Pick your favorite song & instrument and take your seat on stage! Aqwertyan Music uses your QWERTY (computer) keyboarding skills and the Alphabet for notation!
You, and billions of others world-wide, have been 'keyboarding' your whole life. Now you can apply all of that practice instantly and become the ‘musician' you have always wanted to be!
It is that simple. Use your QWERTY keyboard expertise and tens of thousands of MIDI files, including those created professionally for purchase and those made available for free. Aqwertyan insures that your fingers remain on the same keys used in touch typing, while the notes float. If you type you can play instantly and you don't have to be able to read music. Music notation is translated into alphabetical graphics.
All levels of expertise from beginner to expert, and all types of music, from simple to complex, are supported, just the same as with any traditional musical instrument. Most people are able to play with satisfaction and enjoyment within only a few minutes. You can now perform any genre of music with any musical instrument sound fluidly. You can even enjoy jam and Karaoke (files with lyrics) sessions with friends, each playing separate instruments and singing along.
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White Paper
Music is the universal language of mankind.
H.W. Longfellow
Man’s love affair with all things musical is omnipresent. Music transcends language, culture, geographic boundaries and national borders. A significant aspect of our love affair with music is the natural desire to enjoy and play musical instruments. This desire is both timeless and universal. In addition, the social, educational and mental benefits of learning to perform music are proven to be of wide-ranging value.
Gallup has conducted many polls on mankind’s interest in music. Basically, they found that 84% of all adults said they wished they had learned to play a musical instrument as a child. Even more relevant to the Aqwertyan Solution is that 67% said they would still like to learn to play a musical instrument today. 38% of those surveyed are familiar with the educational benefits of playing a musical instrument and an overwhelming majority, 73%, believe that children should start their music education before age 5. Unfortunately, these studies consistently found that less than 10% of those surveyed actually studied any form of music. The percentage of adults studying music is even lower. The point is; even though music plays an esteemed, well-recognized and vital role in society, traditional methods of encouraging, captivating, and finally converting the public’s innate interest into the lifelong satisfaction and fulfillment gained in learning to play an instrument remains discouragingly inadequate.
The Home Entertainment Market, Serious Game Market, and the Tablet Education Markets are amongst the fastest growing software market places in the world today. $Billions are purchased annually and sales are nearly doubling year in and year out. Thousands of ‘App Entrepreneurs’ of all sizes have recognized this opportunity and are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on research and development. The goal is to bring to market novel products with global appeal, self-sustaining revenue, and perhaps a chance at becoming the next powerhouse franchise. Karaoke, which originated in the ‘70s, 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 and continues to generate very substantial revenues 40 years later.
The music software industry, based on its high profile ubiquity, “Universal Language” and vast customer base, a base interested in hearing, creating and performing music on computing devices, has made this a perennial focus and one filled with promise. As such the industry grappled for years with attempts to enable the Desk Top and its ubiquitous QWERTY Keyboard to function as a musical instrument. This interest persists into the next generation. The Tablet Market has now brought forth dozens of virtual (traditional) instruments and new musical interfaces to satisfy the world’s desire to perform music.
Virtual Instruments, and the many new and unique ways of creating music on Tablets, are truly marvelous and some offerings have met with great success. However, the vast majority still falls short of full satisfaction for two important reasons: First, virtual instruments most often require the player to either know or to learn how to read traditional music notation. Second, and far more demanding, is that players must learn traditional fingering or new unique hand/finger motions to play. These new musical interfaces, while being extremely creative in enabling new types of musical sound exploration and composition fall short because they can’t be used to perform our favorite music and songs. Unfortunately, these shortcomings soon send most casual wannabe players back to square one. There is a solution that has been hiding in plain sight; enabling the QWERTY Keyboard as a musical instrument. This is a ‘Keyboard’ the whole world already knows how to play!
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 of entry to one of humankind’s most favored endeavors? The Aqwertyan Solution very purposefully works to capitalize on the unconscious neuro-muscular (muscle memory) learning that comes naturally over time to the left-brain through repetition. Thus, the rapid eye-brain-finger translation (typing) capability that we all use on a daily basis to input information into computers via QWERTY style keyboards is preserved. This is precisely the same left-brain training/proficiency that professional musicians’ gain from years of practice. Billions of computer users throughout the world have thus become, unconsciously, very proficient at fingering the QWERTY keyboard. Aqwertyan Music elevates the QWERTY to the status of Universal Keyboard Instrument. Finally, since Aqwertyan notation is displayed as alphabetic annotated graphics, and can be provided in any local language, or QWERTY Keyboard configuration, there is no prerequisite to know how to read traditional music notation before beginning to play.
Nearly all previous efforts to adapt the QWERTY to music performance have floundered on the belief that the QWERTY key to musical note/pitch assignments must remain as fixed relationships i.e., one QWERTY key equals one note; or perhaps, with the application of the shift key, the same note on a different octave, or otherwise 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 impossible and musically unplayable, as they force the player’s fingers to traverse the whole keyboard to unfamiliar places often contorting and colliding along the way.
In our early Aqwertyan Music System practical testing, the requirement for a fixed relationship proved totally false. University studies have also substantiated that this is an invalid constraint. What has been proven is that our musical right brains are 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 on whether or not a particular physical key may be producing more than one note/pitch. Think of the brain of a concert pianist who must produce 15-20 notes per second in a demanding piece or that of a touch typist creating a document. The conscious thought is on content, not on the keys. The key strokes are automatic. Freed of this false constraint, Aqwertyan Music, via its patented key/note assignment algorithms, produces familiar and thus physically possible fingering on the QWERTY keyboard that can be played in a natural and fluid manner. This is accomplished by floating (reassigning) the QWERTY key-to-note assignments within a musical piece. This not only produces customary/learned fingering in every case 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 experience an exhilarating sense of accomplishment, joy and the reinforcement that comes with success!
It is important to note: Aqwertyan algorithms do all of this while preserving the traditional qwerty-key-finger assignments taught for touch-typing. For beginning keyboard users, typing proficiency is a natural and fun byproduct of the Aqwertyan Solution.
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, but none of these experiences begin to compare with actually playing an instrument. For a person who wants to play, nothing less than performing can possibly satisfy. The power of Aqwertyan music is in the early and lasting satisfaction it brings. A person possessing even a beginning comfort level on a QWERTY keyboard is immediately afforded a rewarding and captivating experience. Player’s choices of instruments and music are now unlimited.
With the anticipated early musical success experienced by a global population of Aqwertyan Music enthusiasts, we hope to create a quantum leap in the number of individuals who possess a deeper and wider spectrum of music appreciation. Hopefully, another wonderful byproduct of Aqwertyan Music will be that many of these individuals will gain the confidence, joy and desire to take up traditional musical instruments.
When millions of people around the world are able to easily experience and share the joy of performing their favorite music it will undoubtedly be another significant step in making the world a happier and friendlier place.
Founder, Aqwertyan Music