Matthew Pagano and Bryce Kirchhausen present their app, Mockingplay, at a music education colloquium in October.
A lot of people from different backgrounds see professional musicians and are inspired to pursue a music career themselves. But too often, when they begin to see the effort that goes into learning music, they get discouraged.
MBA students Bryce Kirchhausen and Matthew Pagano are hoping to change that. They鈥檙e taking the somewhat daunting idea of sitting down with a pile of sheet music and a shiny new instrument鈥攖rying to navigate a new and complicated world on your own鈥攁nd turning it into something almost everyone is familiar with: an app.
鈥淲e鈥檙e breaking down the barrier that has intimidated people鈥攎yself included鈥攁nd making it easier for them to pursue a dream of learning music,鈥� says Kirchhausen. He鈥檚 not a musician himself, but says he might be with the help of a tool like听.
His business partner, Pagano, is a musician. 鈥淚 taught myself guitar, and it wasn鈥檛 until I had been playing for several months that I even felt comfortable enough to begin taking lessons. Mockingplay could bridge that gap,鈥� he says.
Mockingplay is in its early stages, but the duo says it would put scales, rudimentary rhythm听exercises and beginner pieces in one digital location. 鈥淎s a kid, you鈥檙e busy learning the fundamentals, and you might have sheet music scattered all around your room. This organizes all those pieces into chunks, and quizzes you at different stages of the process,鈥� says Pagano.
And just like a good music teacher, it will listen to your progress and give you feedback. According to Pagano, that鈥檚 critical. 鈥淵ou could be practicing incorrectly and never know it unless you talk to a teacher. This is a virtual instructor for when your teacher isn鈥檛 in the room.鈥�
Mockingplay was partially inspired by, a language learning app. 鈥淲e thought, 鈥榃ouldn鈥檛 it be cool if there was something like this for music?鈥欌�� says Pagano.
The idea was born in an entrepreneurship class through the MBA program at the听. From there, Kirchhausen, Pagano and their team started pitching the app to local business owners and others. One of their pitches was at a music education colloquium at the College of Music in October.
鈥淲e emailed Margaret Berg and Jeff Nytch, because we wanted to talk to the people who would potentially use the app,鈥� says Kirchhausen. 鈥淚t was nice exposure and we got great feedback.鈥�
He says the response was positive. 鈥淲e got a lot of constructive critique on things we hadn鈥檛 thought of. We were initially marketing it toward music teachers, but with their feedback, we changed the aim to be toward students.鈥�
The team is currently developing its business plan, and in the spring hopes to begin building out the product. 鈥淩ight now, we鈥檙e digging into the technology. We鈥檙e working on incorporating ear training, so the app can show students the scale and and quiz them on whether it鈥檚 major or minor.
鈥淓ventually, we鈥檇 like to have sequencing where you learn a scale, then you learn simple tunes and you end up playing a more complicated piece at the end of the lesson. Mockingplay can show you how those steps translate into performance,鈥� says Pagano.
The team鈥檚 next milestone is CU鈥檚听in April. Pagano says they hope to build their team and talk to more musicians before then. 鈥淜nowing the New Venture Challenge is on the horizon is driving our progress.鈥�
If you are interested in lending a hand with Mockingplay,听email Matt Pagano.
