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.

in C major

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

AI-generated illustration: a desk by a window at night, an acoustic guitar, a keyboard, and an open notebook with the chord letters C G Am F above handwritten lines

Your chords

Start from the names you already use

If you arrived from guitar holding C, G, Am and F, that is a complete starting point. No sheet music at any stage: you start from those names.

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

The seven chords of C major by number: 1 C, 2 Dm, 3 Em, 4 F, 5 G, 6 Am, 7 B diminished — All seven chords of C major, each with its number

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.

Both hands

The bit everyone gets stuck on

Chords in one hand are the easier half. In the recording below, blocks move toward a line, and the keyboard under the roll outlines each key to press, with the finger to use.

1–5–6m–4 in E♭ major. Blue, left hand: the note each chord is named after, on the beat. Gold, right hand: the chord.

It’s bass-and-strum on piano: left hand the root, right hand the chord. In E♭, as here, the four are E♭, B♭, Cm and A♭.

Doing something different with each hand, in time, while you sing is the wall. That is its own skill, Hand sync: both hands landing together.

Once a part feels familiar, one tap hides the roll. You play from the chord loop instead, the chord that’s due shown large, like a chord chart.

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

How routines work

Your goal

A goal in your own words

Pick a ready-made goal, then say the rest in your own words. Yours might be “play while I sing”.

The goal screen: four ready-made goals (Just sit down and play, Songs I love, My own ideas, Chord fluency) and a goal typed in the player’s own words, “Something of my own, both hands, without a video” — Your goal, in your own words

Your coach works out which skills the goal leans on, such as Chord shapes or Hand sync, and you confirm. In Your skills, they get a small goal tag.

From then on, your planned sessions lean that way. Change the goal whenever you like; nothing you built resets.

Your time

Come back whenever

A session can be twenty minutes with a notebook open, or ten before you pick the guitar back up.

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.

Where to next

Everything in the app

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. The beta is for adults (18+).

This list is run by KeyFu (Martin Neuschulz), Kurt-Eisner-Straße 58, 04275 Leipzig, Germany, hi@keyfu.app (privacy).

You need an iPhone or iPad and a keyboard that connects by USB or Bluetooth MIDI — most current digital pianos do.