Click Here for E- Worldwide Press Releases.pdf

Below is the English translation of the above Japan Business Press article.

Rubato Productions Develops Haptic Piano Learning Product

Japan Business Press 5.10.10

Show romanizationIf playing the piano was easy, everyone would yearn to play the piano. But coordinating the left hand and right hand movements to play different rhythms and playing the melody is not so easy. To be able to play enchanting music that does not require long steady practice is now possible.

No more boring piano lessons! There is now a product that will change the game. Rubato Productions Inc. has developed "The Concert Hands System", a product that enables both hands to be moved along a track on a stand positioned in front of a piano keyboard. The 72” Track’s height can be adjusted to fit various pianos and keyboards. Finger sleeves worn on each finger pulse your fingers to play each piano key.

The wrist pilots guide your hands to each keyboard location, and then a signal is sent to stimulate the finger sleeves. Muscle memory is developed from the stimulated movements of the hand and finger muscles.

Instead of beginning to play the piano traditionally using sheet music, you can quickly start playing beautiful piano music with the patented Concert Hands System.

There is dedicated software to control the system that can be installed on an ordinary desktop or laptop computer. The software also has a library of 10 songs. Soon you will be able to buy and download music data from a library of over 700,000 songs as mass production begins (price TBD).

Watching the PC screen keyboard that appears, you can see and hear each highlighted as it plays. This helps increase the speed of learning a song. The tempo and playing section of each song can be easily adjusted. Start slowly at first with each hand and repeat as many times as needed.

Prototype development of 500 units have been released since August 2009. Roland and Yamaha representatives have expressed interest in licensing the Concert Hands System.

The MSRP is $5,000 dollars for the complete system but the mass market price will be 500 dollars.

Rubato Productions is currently listening to feedback from people who have experienced a variety of prototypes. A marketing strategy to launch mass production model is under current development.

The gaming market for musical instruments is also under development. Products like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band"  are very successful music games that have helped raised tremendous interest in playing musical instruments. "Kids like games better than the piano.

The Internet for the E-Learning market also presents a big opportunity. Data can be transferred easily through the Concert Hands System for E-Learning. Hundreds, even thousands of piano lessons could be taken at the same time.

There have also been inquiries from medical industry that the Concert Hands System can be useful to people with disabilities in rehabilitation hands and fingers. Mr. Caicedo feels there are several areas in the medical field that could benefit from the Concert Hands System.

Practicing the piano with this robot-like machine is downright fascinating and exciting. It’s boring to just stare at sheet music by contrast. The system has been tested on people ages 8 to 80-years-old with incredible results.

Although the piano was invented over 300 years ago, learning to play has not changed much. Mr. McGregor says “Playing the piano should not be hard, it should be easy and enjoyable."