Piano Dust Buster by JoyTunes

There are aspects about learning to play piano where the iPad can help, and there are others where it can hurt. The following will look at both sides and hopefully make learning a bit easier.

Founded in 2010, Israeli startup JoyTunes has been on a mission to become the Rosetta Stone of music — to help those looking to learn play an instrument do so by turning practice into a mobile game, activated by playing the instrument of their choice. The startup’s first app, a free iPad app called Piano Dust Buster, enables wannabe rockstars to learn and play songs at their own pace, using a…

This is an app for every poor child who ever had to suffer through piano lessons only to learn a shoddy version of "Chopsticks," and every pitiable parent who had to endure listening, there's an app called Piano Dust Buster that makes learning to tickle the ivories a little less painful and a lot more fun. It teaches you how to conquer your Steinway at the beginner level, schooling you on note names and explaining rhythm and other skills. It works along with your personal instrument, but if you don't...

Today at the LAUNCH Education Conference in Mountain View, an Israeli startup named JoyTunes showed off the work its been doing in an exciting and active space: The convergence of music education and video games. Co-founder Yuval Kaminka tells us that 85 percent of the population wish they had learned to play an instrument but never made it past those first few frustrating lessons. JoyTunes is on a mission to change that — to turn average Joes into maestros — with a series of music apps and games that a...