Helsinki, Finland – Musopia Ltd, developers of innovative music education software that simplifies the learning process, has been diligently collaborating with Gary Heimbauer to create a complete sequential curriculum, called Play for All, around their apps – FourChords and Ukeoke. Gary is the former head of curriculum for Little Kids Rock, the leading music education non profit-organisation.

Statistics have shown that only 1 out of every 10 people that try to learn an instrument actually succeed and continue playing. Luckily, new digital teaching methods are emerging that can help students experience success much faster and gain the confidence they need to continue.

“We want to make a difference in how people learn to play instruments and to create a fast track to the fun part of playing,” explains Topi Lopponen, Musopia’s CEO. “The way music is being produced and consumed has changed drastically over the last 50 years, but music education is still widely reliant on music theory with its hard-to-learn scales and notations. We believe that bringing contemporary hit songs into classroom teaching with an easy-to-use app experience, similar to games that many children are already playing, will increase the likelihood of children learning the basics of musicianship that they can benefit from all their lives.”

The Play For All! is a fun and student centered curriculum for guitar, ukulele and beyond. The Play for All -course for music teachers shows them how to guide their students from complete beginners to total rock stars in a way that allows learners of all levels to play and progress together and as they learn popular songs they know and love. Musopias apps, called FourChords and Ukeoke, act as a base for learning music theory, playing skills and expressing oneself musically either solo or as a part of a band. The apps are built for differentiation – the teacher can easily keep 20 kids with different skill levels engaged and has more time to give individual attention to the students. The curriculum in combination with the apps is an ever-updating resource with up-to date songs, a complete curriculum with progression, all the support material needed in the classroom and video tutorials highlighting the best-practices in real classroom situations.

The course is based on the true classroom experience of Gary Heimbauer, the former head of curriculum for Little Kids Rock, a music education non-profit that serves over half a million school children throughout the US. “When I was at Little Kids Rock the single most popular and effective resource that we created for teachers to use with their students was home made play-along videos where the chords light up on the screen. So when we discovered the FourChords app with chords, lyrics, and melody, it was a match made in heaven. Soon after, we worked together to make it everything a music teacher could dream of by adding the ability to transpose to new keys along with simplified chord options, tempo control, chord search functionality and much more. The apps are constantly improving while keeping a simple interface. We’ve seen them quickly become a central part of Modern Band programs across the county.”

Musopia
Play for All!
Ukeoke Karaoke
FourChords Guitar Karaoke
YoueTube Video (Trailer)
Press Kit (zip)

Based in Helsinki, Finland, Musopia Ltd is a mobile app development studio dedicated to creating fresh and innovative music software that makes playing music easier. FourChords Guitar Karaoke, Ukeoke Ukulele Karaoke and Justin Guitar Beginner Song Course are the first apps from this team of guitar enthusiasts and IT professionals. All of these apps have been featured by Apple as “Best Apps” and reached TOP10 Music rankings in more than 40 countries. Musopia is working together with the instrument industry and non-profit organisations like Little Kids Rock and Guitars In The Classroom in order to give more people a chance to enjoy making music. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2017 Musopia Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, OS X, iPhone, iPod, iPad and macOS are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.