

Show HN: Piano University - ronyeh

http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pianouniversity.com&#x2F;<p>This is my project idea for the Coursera Startup Engineering class. It&#x27;s basically going to be &quot;Khan Academy&quot; for piano lessons... nugget-sized videos to teach people everything about playing piano.<p>The site doesn&#x27;t actually have any real content yet. So it&#x27;s super duper barely MVP. :-)<p>Still, I welcome your feedback and questions!
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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.

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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!

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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!

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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/](http://blog.pianouniversity.com/)

Thanks!

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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://www.facebook.com/PianoUniversity)

[https://twitter.com/pianouniversity](https://twitter.com/pianouniversity)

[https://plus.google.com/b/109787527146738155349/](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...](http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_index.htm)

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

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome)

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ronyeh
Click Me: [http://www.pianouniversity.com/](http://www.pianouniversity.com/)

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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

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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.

