Enhanced Learning of Jazz Chords with a Projector Based Piano Keyboard Augmentation

Abstract

Learning jazz piano is considered technically difficult. Most people cannot afford private piano tuition and there are many freely available video tutorials on the Internet. This study identified a set of challenging topics associated with learning jazz piano based on popular YouTube jazz piano tutorials. The results suggest that learners are struggling to understand the construction of complex chords in the 12 keys. Most tutorial videos show two parallel keyboards, one physical with the real hands and one virtual keyboard, which the viewers must map onto their own keyboard. Based on these results a series of visualization approaches were explored through a low-fi prototype by augmenting the physical piano keyboard with voicing instructions using a projector.