I’m designing a Pokemon-inspired piano ed. book for kids 6-10, and looking for testers
This book uses cartoon mascots assigned to three areas of music training on the keyboard: dexterity skills, reading/writing/listening, and repertoire performance.
Each mascot starts off as a cute lil’ dude and evolves into huge powerful creatures as the child “levels up.” My ultimate vision is a book or book series that utilizes the mascots in figurine form for prize-incentives and mascot videos to offer help and guidance for individual activities.
The first prototype will only feature the books, and I expect to finish it in the next 1-2 months.
I was hoping to get a list of potentially interested parties that would beta-test the book without cost in exchange for feedback/testimonial.
If you’re interested, please send a message through my website— https://alexgoodhart.com/lessons (you won’t see any mention of the book there, but can send your contact info through the inquiry form).
If you’ve any thoughts to share here I’m all ears! Thank you — Alex
I played piano growing up and learned under teachers who used the Faber Piano Adventure books. I played 12 years, and much of my learning was focused on passing the MTAC certificate of merit tests and performing recitals. I haven't played seriously in a decade, but I'd consider myself pretty well versed in piano theory and playing as a child. I think that your idea is interesting, and certainly could appeal to kids but I see a few flaws with the idea and the sample you provided.
One thing to consider is how you'd draw kids in and make them excited about characters that are suppose to mimic Pokemon, but aren't. The base idea is good, give them something to focus on that makes the idea of practice fun! But, if a kid is into Pokemon, what makes your characters as cool as Pokemon and worth investing in especially since with the intro it's clear you're knocking off Pokemon? If Nintendo was to do something similar, what would make your book worth going for over theirs? This is especially important if you really hope to sell figurines as incentives to practice and market that as a tool for parents to use. Even if the kids did care about the characters and were highly invested, it would be a struggle for most kids to be excited about a plastic figurine that requires months of daily practice and work to get. If the kids aren't into the characters then those figurines aren't going to sell because they won't work.
Also, I'm not certain if that's the final art style you're going with, as it seems AI generated, but I highly suggest finding a single style to stick with and making that style a little less creepy. Currently the artwork is uncanny valley with the strange meat word font made of eyeballs and the creepy final rabbit evolution. Also the idea of Fingy the fingering rabbit might need a bit of reworking as its a little suggestive. I don't think kids would pick up on it at 6-10, but parents and older kids might.
I know that's a lot of criticisms, but I do think that entering a market where there is already a highly established big company in place is going to be difficult even with an amazing product. A lot of parents just buy what books their kid's teacher tells them too, so you don't just have to convince the kids and parents, but also the teachers that your books are better than Piano Adventures. My suggestion would be to think these issues through before you put more effort into creating the book, although I'm are you know a lot more about teaching music than I do.
Hey! I appreciate all the critical thoughts! And I love the alarm raised over Fingy the Fingering Rabbit. Lmfao. I stopped caring about the term pretty soon into teaching but can certainly see your point.
I find Faber to be really poorly structured; IMO a musician built from the ground up should be more absorbed with technical practice and aural engagement than notational literacy for the first year/two of lessons. Faber, to me, distracts by digging into minutiae and switching too often between learning goals.
The characters will need to be style-normalized by an artist as these are allAI-generated with some simple post-processing.
This won’t be as addictive as Pokémon, but the student would ideally get a figurine or card/sticker every single lesson. I’ve found that “prize time” after a lesson is an easy/reliable tool.
Nintendo hasn’t ever done educational games with Pokémon, so I doubt that issue arising. If it is truly made into a good product that finds real success I’d love for it to be a game as well competing with apps like music.ally. Besides the business requirements, to me that depends on the characters’ being endearing/surprising/helpful/mysterious, in tandem with a very purposefully ordered series of chapters that build up the most essential skills so the student quickly gains confidence before encountering too many challenges. I’ve written many exercises and mini songs for my students over the last 10 years, some of which are still day-1 materials for my new kids.
The characters presence livens up the atmosphere and they serve as guides for students during independent study both by focus direction (an octopus’s ink being the source of staff lines in a reading-introduction activity, for example) and FAQ-style advice.
Having shown some designs to a students and friends, I’ve found that adults overestimate creepiness, but you’re not wrong at all about certain unsettling designs and general AI-weirdness requiring a “reskin”.
I think the biggest walls in front of me are seeing the prototype through, designing it with the right application in mind (self study vs. parent assisted vs. teacher assisted) and then finding the right way to get it published/produced/marketed. The latter being well outside the scope of my talents lol.
Thinking back to my first years learning with the Faber books, I do recall my teacher telling me not to bother reading portions of the books, skipping between sections and just highlighting important passages. I know there are other companies with learning books that are popular, and I'm sure you know a lot more about them than I do. I will also note, as mentioned I did do the certificate of merit program, so I was taught notation and theory young and it was pushed upon me heavily. I actually have a lot of negative feelings toward the way I was taught, for example I was only allowed to play pieces I wanted that were not for the exams during a single month of the year when I passed an exam and before starting for the next. I wasn't allowed to learn what I wanted, and piano was just a tool for me to get into college so that colors my perception heavily. Actually kid me probably would've loved this idea as I was big on pokemon and cute animals.
It's interesting that kids don't seem to find the art as unsettling as adults. I do wonder if opinions may be colored by your students not wanting to upset you, versus adults who are more honest as they understand the investment you'd be putting into your books. Or if maybe they just find the art colorful and fun in a way that adults don't?
If you're planning on the books being for ages 6-10 and on having stickers and figurines as motivators I'd suggest sticking with something at least partially led by parents or teachers. I've noticed a lot of parents of friends who played instruments didn't keep up with what their kid was learning, and couldn't really tell if their kid was practicing correctly, so you might end up with parents rewarding bad practices.
Thinking about things that I would've wanted as a kid, I am a visual learner and would have been awesome to have videos that show how to move my hands, where keys are etc. I know a lot of people use stickers to color each key for new learners, and a set of colored stickers that match what you see in the video would've helped my young ADHD self when I got stuck on fingering outside of lessons. It stucks to unlearn a week's worth of habital fingering. Of course you mentioned that videos would be a later thing, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Either way I wish you luck! I don't have kids so I can't beta test, but I do hope that you are able to create a product you love. It would be interesting to see a product that caters more to the way kids learn than the books I had as a kid.
All of your experiences resonate and I value the time you put in these comment, so thank you very much.
As you can imagine, I encounter all this regularly. I have also learned much from my own bad-experience lessons/teachers. In lieu of non-achievement based rewards, I’ve used small single candies in the past but that doesn’t always fly with parents either. The balance of combining teacher/parent/self read applications is daunting but I def realize it’s efficacy depends on this; thank you for reminding me of its relevance. There are so many ways to address this, having a certain amount of signatures from parents per week as evidence of practice is one I use as sometimes as a prize requirement.
I think re: kids’ acceptance of the scary designs, it depends on delivery and was partially influenced by their knowing/trusting me. I show them with an air of excitement and spooked caution them some my big a lil scary. Yknow, a bit of showmanship.
Given that parents are the ones who would be your target audience, the people you're selling these books to, their opinions matter. Adult opinions matter when you're making books for kids. You might find more push back in later, costly stages of production if you ignore that feedback.
It sounds like you’re implying that I am ignoring someone’s feedback? If it appears that way it certainly isn’t the case.
You're dismissive of how off base the art style is. Moving forward, do take that feedback from adults and consider work with a professional, not AI.
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This is something I already said I plan on doing.
Here's a preview of the prototype book!
I’ve got a friend who home schools with two sons in that age range that I think would love this design and idea. I’m going to see if she’s got access to a piano or keyboard.
I’ve also got one in there, but we don’t have anything we could use to play on and don’t currently have plans