What is it? A smart, portable electronic piano.
Price: $299
Gift group: Budding Chopins in the family
Santa’s scoop: TheONE Music Group makes it easier to conquer playing keyboards with a full-sized instrument that literally light up its 61 keys when synchronizing with special digital sheet music. It comes in either an Onyx black or white gold color scheme.
Musicians hook up the TheONE Light Keyboard TOK to a tablet via a USB connection and download TheONE Smart Piano app to access eight video lessons, over 100 “Guitar Hero” like rhythm games, and sheet music to thousands of songs.
The virtual tutor has LED-guided lessons, and sessions literally light up the keys when a song’s sheet music is rolling on the tablet.
Now, around half of the more than 4,000 tablatures are free to play such as “Jingle Bells,” “Moonlight Sonata” and Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag,” but the others cost between 99 cents and $3.99 and are the more contemporary songs including The Beatles’ “Day Tripper, U2’s “Sweetest Thing” and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”
TheONE Light Keyboard TOK is small enough to rest on an adult’s lap, comes loaded with 128 instrument sounds, an output to plug into sound systems, microphone input, headphone jack, onboard MP3 speakers, a MIDI output, and recording feature. It uses either six AA batteries (required) or the included AC adapter.
As the saying goes, practice makes perfect, so don’t expect to be Chick Corea or even the B-52’s Kate Pierson after a couple of hours with the instrument. It offers great learning potential but mastery comes from determination, repetition and exercising the brain with those musical digits.
