I’ve always wanted to learn how to play piano, to be a chain-smoking, Jelly Roll Morton style jazz tinkler… but I’ve never really had the equipment to get it done. I’m sort of excited, then, by the Piano Apprentice accessory: just slap an iPad into the small keyboard accessory, and you should be on your road to ragtime in, well, no time at all.
The keyboard connects to the iPad through the 30-pin dock connector, and comes with a free app that will help you with your ivory-tinkling tutelage. Used in conjunction with each other, you can learn to play piano by either following the lessons on your iPad, pressing the keys as their LEDs light up, or do both at the same time.
In addition, the Piano Apprentice is Core MIDI compliant, which means you can use this as a controller for other MIDI apps. For example, you could use the Piano Apprentice controller to knock out a ditty in Garage Band.
The Piano Apprentice isn’t available yet, but should go on sale in September, and will cost about $100.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
