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Allegro Multimedia / Fisher-Price Agreement Opens Doors Allegro Multimedia licenses Piano Wizard™ Method to Toy Industry Giant Tampa, Florida - February 2006 - Allegro Multimedia and Fisher Price, owned by Mattel, recently signed a strategic licensing agreement that harmonizes Allegro's Piano Wizard method with Fisher Price's innovative commitment to music education. The agreement allows Fisher Price to introduce Allegro's technology into the toy market as the Piano Wizard is a revolutionary teaching platform that is changing the way kids learn piano. "Our strategic partnership and licensing agreement with Fisher Price ensures that future generations of children will use the Piano Wizard method as training wheels in discovering a life-long, love of the piano, ultimately helping to create many more musicians," says Chris Salter, CEO of Allegro Multimedia and inventor of Piano Wizard. The Piano Wizard method is inherently different from other music-teaching approaches because it introduces actual playing of real music with an amazingly simple interactive video game. The groundbreaking technology allows virtually anyone to play songs within minutes and transforms the tedious and traditional methods of piano practice into an exciting video game. Piano Wizard can make the first few years of a child's musical experience fun instead of torture, because children can now actually play to learn piano. "The problem with the way many people learn piano is that they go through all the traditional methods for months and months, and they're still not playing anything they want to play," says Scott Houston, the host of the public television shows, Play Piano in a Flash! and The Piano Guy with Scott Houston. Houston continued, "They aren't inspired to practice, and they stop learning. That's why I think Piano Wizard is really clicking with people. Instead of saying they have to go and practice, they are genuinely getting immersed in this game. It turns practice into simply learning to play quicker. For any of my students who come in the door and say they are nowhere, don't understand how to read music and need a place to start, I will definitely be using Piano Wizard. To be able to see how the progression of this product turns the playing of the game into playing real music, and how easily that transition takes place, is very impressive to me." Salter explained, "Piano Wizard's simple interface allows players to learn by doing, simply by hitting the right key at the right time--as Bach so famously put it hundreds of years ago. Because the game can subconsciously teach music essentials to children at such a critical development stage, they can learn music deeply and intuitively, almost as if it were a native language, which is how we believe Mozart processed and assimilated music at such a young age." Salter added, "By playing the Piano Wizard game, children begin to absorb and deduce basic music theory in the same way children subconsciously learn to organize parts of speech. The foundations of structure and fundamentals are being set without needing to know how to read. In the same manner, we all learn our native languages by speaking, kids can subconsciously absorb the underlying mathematical logic of music, the grid of pitch and time, by playing. Only with Piano Wizard, instead of complex musical notation the music "notes" stream by as simple color coded game characters, not difficult to master hieroglyphics and the music pours forth enjoyably." This year, Fisher Price is focusing on developing high-quality toys in the musical arts category and the use of the Piano Wizard method in the company's upcoming I Can Play Piano™ system will play a major role in accomplishing the goal of helping kids learn naturally and painlessly through musical play. Salter concluded, "We are looking forward to a continuing relationship with Fisher Price to set the stage for a revolution in music education, particularly as it affects early child development and the well-known resultant benefits to math and SAT scores in later life." "Given our expertise in the creation of unique learning platforms and our understanding of the value of musical play, we recognized the Piano Wizard method as the perfect basis for our new generation of musical toys," says David Allmark, general manager and senior vice president, Fisher-Price. "Fisher Price together with the Piano Wizard method will begin to instill a lifelong love of music in children worldwide."
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| Contacts: | Adriana Sol / Brian Metcalf
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