For producers

You can build the chords. Now play them.

KeyFu is a piano practice app for iPhone and iPad that trains the hands behind your progressions, on the MIDI keyboard you already own.

Drawing a progression in and playing it are different skills. KeyFu works on the second one, with no notation to read.

Harmony

Chords by number

1–5–6m–4 · in C that's C · G · Am · F

Progressions go by number, so four chords drawn in C are the same four in any key. A C-only chord pack never quite fits the track.

The practice screen for 1 – 5 – 6m – 4 block chords in C major: the coach says why this one is here, gold blocks for each chord move toward the line with a finger number in each, the chords are named 5 · G, 6m · Am and 4 · F above, and the keys to press are outlined on the keyboard below — The same 1–5–6m–4 in C, the keys to press lit below

The small m means minor: the darker-sounding one. Everything else on the roll is what you already read — pitch up, time across.

What does not travel is your hands. The same progression in another key puts different shapes under your fingers, and the repetitions exist to close that gap.

Your key

Practice in the key the track is in

12 keys · major · minor · modes · five and six tones

Let the coach pick today’s key, or pick it yourself: any of the twelve, in major, minor, a mode, or a five- or six-tone family like blues.

Where we are, with the Type menu open over the home screen: major, minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Locrian under Modes, then Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Minor Blues and Hirajoshi under Five & six tones; below, KeyFu says C major holds 25 shapes your hands haven’t met yet, and a button, Make C major where I am — Major, minor, a mode, or a five- or six-tone family

Before you switch, the coach says what it means for today: the same shapes in a new place, or new shapes that come first.

On any exercise’s page you can try another key and hear it first, without changing today’s plan.

What is in the library

Your keyboard

It reads MIDI, nothing else

Plug in the keyboard you already own over USB.

USB works the moment you plug in. For Bluetooth MIDI, tap Connect a Bluetooth keyboard in KeyFu, then pick your keyboard.

Tell KeyFu its size, from 25 to 88 keys, and the exercises it picks stay within it. Shift an octave, and KeyFu can move with you.

Feedback comes from what you played — which notes, when — not from a microphone in the room.

KeyFu is its own app, not a plugin: nothing goes in or out of your DAW. It thinks like one, though: MIDI in, chords by number, notes toward a line.

Your time

Sessions fit the gap you have

Five minutes while something bounces, or up to half an hour: the session is built around the time you actually have.

A ready-made routine’s page: about 4 minutes and 4 exercises, a summary with seventh-chord, 2–5–1 and vamp in color, then the four exercises, each with a number-free tempo line marked your pace or easing in, Practice routine and Save as my routine. — A ready-made lo-fi routine: about four minutes, free to play

Change time puts the plan together again for a new length. Set a goal once, like a bassline you can’t play yet, and the plan leans that way.

No plan today? Start a ready-made routine, or build your own with KeyFu Pro.

How routines work

Your practice time only ever adds up, so a week off costs nothing. Skills you have not touched in a while show as fading until you play them again.

See a session, start to finish

No notation

Nothing to read

There is no sheet music anywhere in the app, and no point at which progress requires learning to read it.

The notes come toward a line, the keys to press light up below, and you play. The blocks are there while a part is new, and one tap hides them.

If you have bounced off piano apps before, this is usually where it happened: the app was really teaching notation, and playing was the reward for getting through it.

Join the beta

Invitations go out in small waves. Bring the keyboard you already have.

We send one confirmation email, then invitations in small waves. Without the tick we use your address only for the beta and the launch (privacy).

You need an iPhone or iPad and a keyboard that connects by USB or Bluetooth MIDI — most digital pianos do. What one session looks like.