Well known industry personalities Paul Carman and Andy Carvill have joined forces to create a new venture - Keyboard Academy. This new company is all about keyboard education, software and music.

Keyboard Academy will focus on keyboards but not from a technical perspective (although that will be covered to some degree) but mainly from a musical 'how to play' point of view.

Paul Carman commented 'We have noticed that all the focus of keyboards seems to be about the technology. That is important but the actual playing of the instrument seems to be getting lost. Going back a few years many conversations were about 'how did you play that...' or 'what was that chord'. Now everything revolves around what the buttons do. Keyboard Academy is all about getting back to actually playing and improving your musical abilities on your keyboard'.

Andy Carvill told us 'No one expects to pick up a Clarinet or Flute and just be able to play it – people need lessons. For some reason a keyboard has this image that they play themselves and you don't need to learn how to play it to get the best results. Unfortunately this is not true. You need a lot of musical knowledge to play a keyboard properly'.

One aspect of Keyboard Academy will be a range of music books covering a selection of topics. Some of these books include brand new compositions by Andy Carvill and, at launch, there are also books of popular classics with a twist and a 'chord substitution' book which features both an easy and more advanced version of popular songs.

These books come with help and advice about playing the pieces, and all this will be backed up by a comprehensive website offering lots of educational videos all in easy to understand language to help you play better. There will be an option to buy Mp3 performances of the books content and a special 'Minus 1' version which can be used if your keyboard has Mp3 playback facilities. This means you can play along to the fully orchestrated accompaniment, rhythm changes, drum fills etc. just by playing the right hand melody and (if you want to) simple left hand chords.