HoloLens Will Be Your AR Piano Teacher in the Future

You've likely seen light-up musical keyboards that teach you how to play a song with visual cues, but few of those devices exist and have a limited number of songs you can actually learn. But Karl Baumann and his HoloLens Hackathon team figured out that in mixed reality, you can learn music with visual cues with any piano.

The result of their 48-hour HoloHacks session in Los Angeles is HoloKeys: a proof-of-concept app that teaches simply melodies with colored overlays for the keys you're supposed to play. The video above shows the app in action, though it looks like the highlighted keys are a little off.

While the team may have quite a bit of work to do before HoloKeys is ready for app stores, the idea itself shows the power of mixed reality as an educational tool. We've seen how it can help both doctors and nurses learn and do their jobs better, but clearly these headsets offer additional possibilities for creative and artistic instruction as well.

With further development, an app like HoloKeys could even monitor your form and technique to teach the piano in a more comprehensive way than current technology. Because the HoloLens is so new, we're mostly seeing simple demonstrations. When you apply your imagination to consider future possibilities, however, you can really see how mixed reality has to offer us all.

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Cover image by HoloKeys