KeyFu
Join the beta

For songwriters

You know the chords. Now get them under your hands.

KeyFu is a piano practice app for iPhone and iPad, for songwriters who know their chords. What is missing is your hands playing them while you sing.

You will need an iPhone or iPad and a keyboard that connects by USB or Bluetooth MIDI. Most digital pianos and MIDI keyboards do.

Your chords

Start from the names you already use

C · G · Am · F is 1–5–6m–4

If you arrived from guitar holding C, G, Am and F, that is a complete starting point. Nothing has to be translated before you can begin.

The numbers in C major: 1 C, 2 Dm, 3 Em, 4 F, 5 G, 6 Am and 7 B°, each beside its chord symbol 1, 2m, 3m, 4, 5, 6m and 7°
The chords you know, as steps of the key

KeyFu shows the number beside the name, because numbers carry a progression to whichever key suits your voice.

Pick any of the twelve keys, or let the coach pick; today’s plan is built in it. You never have to study the numbers first.

A 10-minute chord routine, no sheet music

Your goal

A goal in your own words

Pick a ready-made goal and add your own words, like "play while I sing", rather than "learn the C major scale".

Your coach works out which skills the goal leans on, such as Chord shapes or Hand sync, and you confirm. Rings on your skill wheel mark them.

From then on, each day’s exercises lean that way. Change the goal whenever you like; nothing you built resets.

Both hands

The bit everyone gets stuck on

Chords in one hand are the easier half.

Bass + chord, hands split, in C major: KeyFu says this one is here because what you are working toward leans on chord shapes; blue blocks for the left hand’s low notes and gold blocks for the right hand’s chords 5 · G, 6m · Am and 4 · F move toward the line, with both hands’ keys outlined below
Left hand on the root, right hand on the chord

Doing something different with each hand, in time, while your attention is somewhere else entirely — like singing — is the wall.

That is its own skill, Hand sync: both hands landing together.

New shapes and the moves between them come first, untimed. Later an exercise can come back with both hands, and a notch faster once it holds.

The free ready-made routine Two Hands, One Groove works on exactly this: roots below, chords above.

How routines work

Your time

Come back whenever

A session can be twenty minutes with a notebook open, or ten while the chorus is still bugging you.

Today’s session is sized to the time you pick, and Change time rebuilds it for another length.

Disappear for two weeks and nothing resets: the coach eases you back in, and skills you haven’t touched show as fading until you play them.

No notation

You never have to read anything

Not reading music is not a gap to be fixed here — it is the assumption the whole thing is built on.

There is no sheet music in the app and no stage at which you need it.

Instead, blocks drift toward a line, and when one reaches it, that is the key you press. The key lights up on the keyboard below.

The roll is there while a part is new, and one tap hides it. The point is playing the part without looking.

Join the beta

Invitations go out in small waves. If you can hold C, G, Am and F, you have what you need to start.

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.