Duo, Duolingo’s owl mascot—a creature that’s so tired of reminding you to practice your French lessons he caught an awful flu—will now be hounding you to get your damn hands on those piano keys and practice your chords. Duolingo is now offering a physical keyboard for beginner pianists. As much as it promises to help you understand the basics of the ivory keys, it may not be necessary if you’re just dipping your toes into basic music theory.
Duolingo promises that the $250 beginner’s keyboard is “a piano, nothing more, nothing less.” To unpack that, Loog x Duolingo Piano is certainly a small piano for bare beginners. It’s 19 inches wide and weighs less than 4 pounds. The piano has built-in stereo speakers, a headphone jack, ports for an octave shifter and sustain pedals, and a USB-C port for charging and MIDI connection. The only physical control beyond the keys is a wooden volume dial.
As for how it sounds, Duolingo promises the included note samples made to recreate a physical piano. It has pressure sensitivity that will change the sound depending on how hard or soft you jam on each key.
The language learning app says it worked with Loog, a company with a lot of experience making guitars, to craft a three-octave, 37-key piano specifically for Duolingo users. The company is mainly known for releasing children’s learning instruments through Kickstarter. Loog is on the verge of releasing its own Loog Piano, first unveiled on Kickstarter last year. The version shown on crowdfunding sports a red cloth finish rather than Duolingo’s green rendition. The two versions are identical down to the wooden end pieces. The Duolingo version comes with a matching wood stand for your phone.
There’s essentially nothing keeping you from using the Duolingo piano and stand with any other piano learning app or even to hold up your sheet music. Loog’s base version also costs $250 and is up for preorder at the same time as Duolingo’s. Essentially, the only difference is the color and the extra stand. You can alternatively buy a $300 piano paired with a magnetic music stand.
Duolingo launched its music learning app last year. It uses the same incentive-based lesson-learning structure as its language app, but instead of flubbing through a sentence in Spanish, you’re learning basic music theory and using the phone touchscreen to play notes at the right time. It also works with instruments or an on-screen keyboard in a pinch.
Practically any piano keyboard will work with Duolingo Music. The app is currently limited to learning piano. Remember, a $250 device isn’t necessary if your grandmother still has her player piano gathering dust in the corner of her house. Plus, if your grandmother still remembers how to play, she may be a better wellspring of information than any app.
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