The Pop Corporation

DuoLingo has been a runaway success when it comes to teaching people new languages, turning tedious learning into something approaching a fun, social game. Wouldn’t it be great if they branched out and did it with other things we’d like to learn?

Well, answering our prayers, DuoLingo has started teaching music theory basics, so you no longer have to bone up on things with a boring music teacher who tells you pop music is rubbish and smacks the backs of your hands with a ruler for having bad posture.

It’s called Duolingo Music, imaginatively, and with the help of a little keyboard on your phone, you’ll get to grips with the basics. You won’t even need to own an instrument (although it’d be good if they had a pro version which you can rig up to a keyboard or whatever).

The lessons teach the names of individual notes so you can work things out yourself, and then obviously, you’ll slowly learn how to read music and it’s all gamified like when you’re learning French or Spanish or whatever.

DuoLingo’s Karen Chow says that they “wanted to focus on teaching music literacy in a fun and engaging way,” noting that other “foundations” teach music in a really “boring, dry fashion,” with this format hoping to do the reverse.

Duolingo Music is iOS only for the time being, but that’ll be rolled out across all formats in due course.