Press Release – COURSES Launches on Fret Zealot Apps

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Music Education Tech Start-Up Launches Course Marketplace on Fret Zealot App

Innovative, New Combined Approach to Guitar Instruction and Internet of Things (IoT) Technology

Washington, DC – Edge Tech Labs is launching Fret Zealot Courses, a marketplace that allows instructors to offer video lesson programs for either a fixed price or subscription.

Fret Zealot is an LED strip that is applied directly to the fretboard of a guitar, bass, or ukulele. It is accompanied by an all-access, highly interactive Android and iOS app that includes every scale; ten thousand chords; over seventy thousand songs; a tuner with over fifty-five tunings; a metronome; customizable and programmable practice features; and various tools, including microphone listening for accuracy, application programming interface (API) integrations, and light shows. Fret Zealot partners with various guitar-centric leaders, such as Uberchord, and includes instructor-led video tutorials as well.

Fret Zealot is designed to make learning to play instruments fun and engaging. This way, aspiring musicians of all ages can learn to play intuitively, at their own pace, and on their own time.

The Marketplace’s primary innovation is that the video tutorials now sync directly with the Fret Zealot LEDs on the instrument’s fretboard, demonstrating what the instructor is teaching in real time.

Using a thin LED strip that aligns with the frets and shows players where to put their fingers, Fret Zealot products capitalize on technology to make learning an instrument easier and more intuitive. Users can learn at their own pace and on their own time, and they can start and stop with ease.

“With thousands of customers around the globe, our data is showing that players want ‘bite-size’ lessons of just fourteen to eighteen minutes,” says Shaun Masavage, Fret Zealot CEO. “No physical instructor offers in-person lessons less than thirty minutes, meaning there’s a significant gap between what’s available and what we’re delivering with the Courses feature. Fret Zealot’s technology makes it seem as if the instructor’s hands are right on your own instrument—without ever having to leave your home.”

Courses available through Fret Zealot have several key benefits:

  • They are handpicked. Instructors are chosen, and the marketplace is not open to any course submission. Quality is ensured from the start.
  • Fret Zealot data are created manually to ensure complete accuracy of the finger locations and color displays.
  • By the summer of 2020, over two thousand videos will be available. Compared to traditional instruction, the marketplace offers formidable monetary and time-saving advantages.

Fret Zealot COURSES – Behind the Scenes

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We developed Fret Zealot courses because we know that the music education industry has to change. Fender’s CEO has been quoted several times saying they estimate that 90% of new players give up playing guitar (forever) after just a few weeks. It’s a shame considering how many benefits playing guitar (or ukulele or bass) has. With thousands of customers around the globe, we’ve realized why people quit (and why others don’t!). Here are the main reasons why people quit their instrument:

Time

Money

Motivation

With guitar retention at 10% in the industry and Fret Zealot usage more than quadruple that, we wanted to make that number get even higher, and to help our customers learn faster and easier. After tons of customer research and testing in our office, we designed the Fret Zealot Course Marketplace to address each of the big concerns: time, money, and motivation.

Time

One of the first things we learned when we dove into Fret Zealot customer research was that players want small, “bite-sized” lessons of just 14 – 18 minutes. Have you ever seen an instructor offer a 14 minute in-person lesson? NOPE. Plus, our users wanted the ability to immediately pick up where they left off, so if you have to leave a lesson mid-way through, it’s easy to find your place again. From seeing people play and learn, we realized that the visual reminders of the Fret Zealot LEDs makes these short sessions much more intuitive and useful for retaining what you learned. Now, instead of having to book an hour lesson on someone else’s schedule, you can learn on your lunch break, learn while waiting for dinner to cook, and learn on the go with no inconvenience or setup.

Money

To many, this is the most important obstacle to learning an instrument. Just like buying a guitar, Fret Zealot can be a big purchase. The long term savings, though, are huge. Guitar lessons rarely cost less than $30 per half hour. With at least one lesson per week to keep progress going, you’re looking at $120 per month at minimum. What if you have something come up that forces you to take a few weeks or months off? All of your progress is mostly gone, and you have to start the money train all over again. Fret Zealot is a one-time purchase, and the Courses feature has options for both single purchases and an all-inclusive subscription. You’ll have a virtual guitar teacher available to you 24/7 and a database of all of your past lessons for a fraction of the cost as traditional instruction!

Source: https://www.voicesinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/graph-of-the-cost-of-guitar-lessons.jpg

Motivation

The ultimate barrier to entry. We LOVE playing music around here. But even we can get sick of scales or repetitive exercises – we want to play the hits! If you’re caught in a teacher’s program and practice cycle that you find boring… then it fails its purpose! The goal of Fret Zealot is to be the ultimate toolbox for learning guitar and give you all the tools necessary to learn YOUR way. We even made a post about how to customize your Fret Zealot installation here. Some people love to use our scales feature so they can practice solos and riffing. Others use the chord progression feature to practice changing hand positions. Others dive right into songs, learning on their own or using the free video lessons for getting started. Just like we purposefully designed Fret Zealot so it would fit on YOUR favorite guitar (instead of permanently installing Fret Zealot onto a guitar of our choosing), we designed our app so that you can learn YOUR way. The Course Marketplace takes this one step further by branching out in specific styles, skills, and songs and taking you step by step to mastering the skills you want to learn. You also get to choose WHO you learn from, so you have a guitar instructor that matches your learning style and needs. There are infinite styles and techniques to learn on your instrument, and we’re using our Courses to deliver that variety to you! 

Check out the Course Marketplace and see for yourself!