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Show HN: Piano University

5 points by ronyeh ↗ HN
http://www.pianouniversity.com/

This is my project idea for the Coursera Startup Engineering class. It's basically going to be "Khan Academy" for piano lessons... nugget-sized videos to teach people everything about playing piano.

The site doesn't actually have any real content yet. So it's super duper barely MVP. :-)

Still, I welcome your feedback and questions!

11 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 36.6 ms ] thread
simantel
It's a good-looking site, and I like the idea, but it doesn't really seem "minimally viable" without any content. I'm digging the blog, though, and look forward to following along!
ronyeh
You're right. I'll work on a few basic tutorials to reach MVP status. :-)

If you use tumblr, you can follow my blog in the upper right corner: http://blog.pianouniversity.com/

Thanks!

ScottWhigham
Hmmm - right now, instead of a "super duper barely MVP", I see a "website designed around an idea". I think you're "more than a little early" in promoting this right now but I wish you luck. The site design is "good enough" so focus on building the content.
ronyeh
I agree with you. It may be leaner than even Eric Ries would recommend.

I was trying to meet the deadline for the Coursera course :-). All they required is a landing page with donation and tweet buttons, so that's all I did for now.

But now that I know there is some interest, I'll get to work building some real content!

gtani
ok, what are you going to do differently from the Garage band lessons, which i thought were well done.

Like how many camera angles will convey all the nuances of fingering, pedals, "letting the weight of the arms fall on the fingers" etc

ronyeh
The lessons in GarageBand are amazing! I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get famous artists to do tutorials for me. It would be a dream if (one day) I could get Billy Joel to do a Piano U lecture about "Piano Man"... hehe.

The difference is this site will be free. You don't need a Mac with GarageBand and you don't need to pay for premium lessons. I don't expect to get rich off of it, but if I can "break even" by paying off serving costs and the cost to hire anyone to make lessons, then that's all I'm asking for.

I plan to monetize with affiliate links (7% for driving an iTunes sale) and donations. It would be cool to have a companion iPad app. In that case, I could monetize with advertising, and maybe with an inexpensive In-App Purchase for super premium content.

Also, I will follow Khan Academy's model of having super short videos. I think people's attention spans are about 5-10 minutes. So I'll break down material into ~5 minute nuggets.

makerops
Include a signup gatherer! I had it as a plan to start learning Monday, and will def use the site. Do you have a "starting point" tutorial in mind (what books to read etc?)
ronyeh
What is your experience level? Are you a complete beginner?

Thanks for the signup idea. I assume you mean a way to gather users' emails? I signed up for MailChimp, but they require a physical address to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. I'm not sure I want to show off my apartment's address to the world, so I might have to buy a P.O. Box first before I do email signups.

For now, if you like social networks, you can get updates from here:

https://www.facebook.com/PianoUniversity

https://twitter.com/pianouniversity

https://plus.google.com/b/109787527146738155349/

If you have a Mac, I recommend the free lessons that come with GarageBand. You can also try searching YouTube for piano lessons. For easy sheet music, I like this site: http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_inde...

If you have a MIDI piano, you can try out: http://synthesiagame.com/ Some people really like it.

palidanx
I've been playing piano since I was a kid, but I wouldn't mind taking a class for a refresher for music theory.
ronyeh
Thanks for the feedback! This site is going to target adults with no/little experience playing piano, but music theory will definitely play a part in the content.

For example, beginners should definitely know that most western pop/rock music can be played just with C, F, and G major chords. That's something that would have blown my mind when I was a beginner.

And if you throw in an Am, you can play all the songs featured in the Axis of Awesome video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome