For Chris Salter, learning how to play the piano came easy. But learning how to actually read music was not.

This challenge inspired Salter, a 1983 graduate in linguistics and music, to develop Piano Wizard, a video game that teaches users to play piano through a color-coded keyboard and on-screen prompts. The game is already being sold by major online retailers and should reach shelves by the end of the year.

While fun and entertaining, Piano Wizard aims at teaching aspiring musicians how to read music through graduated game play.

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In the game’s beginner levels, colorful icons or “notes,” such as dinosaur eggs and rocket ships travel on a straight line from the bottom of the screen toward an on-screen keyboard at the top. When the icons reach the keys on the screen, players hit a corresponding colored key on an electronic keyboard, which plugs into the computer.

As the game advances, notes scroll across the screen horizontally, imitating the lines of the staff and the way music is read. Advanced users can import electronic music files and play along to learn scores and arrangements.

“When most kids start playing the piano, they have a 90 percent failure rate, but it’s not the music, it’s the way we teach music,” Salter said. “This kind of takes the torture out of it, takes the abstractness out of learning how to read the musical language.”

Salter said he first thought of inventing the game shortly after graduating from SIUC. He entered the University in 1978 to study cinematography and began producing films about music.

Shortly after, Salter met piano instructor Don Beattie, who came to the School of Music in 1979, and began taking piano lessons with the new faculty member. While Beattie helped Salter learn to play piano before he graduated, Salter said he never mastered reading music.

Then, a few months after graduating in 1983, Salter took keyboarding classes to learn how to type. He said the lessons were frustrating until he played a typing game, and soon he was typing 40 words per minute. It dawned on him that a piano video game could have the same effect.

After years of consideration, Salter decided to form a business to develop and manufacture the game. Allegro Multimedia was born in August 2001; following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the dot-com business bust, finding investors was difficult.

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But $3.5 million and a few patents later, Piano Wizard is riding on the popularity of the video game market. Last year alone, video games made for a $12 billion industry.

Salter said CompUSA recently placed a large order to sell the game, and online retail giants, such as target.com and amazon.com, already sell the game. On target.com, the game retails for $109.99.

He also said a major toy manufacturer is looking into developing the game further for sales late next year and an infomercial featuring the game will debut nationally on Wednesday.

Throughout the process, Salter kept his connection with Beattie and with the SIU School of Music.

This fall, with the help of Beattie, and his wife Delayna Beattie, a Piano Wizard academy was founded in conjunction with the School of Music.

Comprising mostly of 4- to 8-year-olds from the Child Development Laboratory, the academy focuses on teaching children to play the piano and read music through playing the game.

Children work with adult mentors from the School of Music, along with Don and Delayna Beattie, to learn simple songs on the game. After practicing the song on an electronic keyboard, children move to actual pianos to apply what they learned.

The academy and its students are featured in the infomercial, and students from the Department of Radio and Television are developing a documentary about the game and the academy.

“It’s a wonderful and extraordinary game that will ultimately help a whole lot of people,” Don Beattie said. “It’s a wonderful starting point that allows them to read a dozen pieces a day and helps them become literate readers of music while still having fun. Music is a language, and this helps increase their vocabulary.”

Last week, 10 children packed the academy’s cozy studio space one afternoon in the Old Baptist Foundation, singing along to “Merrily we roll along,” which they were learning to play on the game.

After stopping for a brief lesson about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and reviewing music notes, the 3- and-4-year-olds ran to the computers set up with the game. Perched on booster seats and sometimes the lap of a mentor, the children played along, getting instant feedback from the game about their timing and tempo.

“I got a 98 percent!” one little girl shouted out before turning back to the screen to tackle the song again, hoping for a perfect score.

“Don and I are firm believers that music is a birthright not reserved for the elite,” Salter said. “It should be open to all, not just those who have access to classical education. Music is something joyful and joins people at a spiritual level, and allowing everyone to have that is a beautiful thing.”

Reporter Monique Garcia can be reached at [email protected]