The famous Greek philosopher and mathematician, Plato once said that "music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything". Ancient Indian scriptures have a special place for music. According to Indian spirituality, 'Nāda yoga' is a metaphysical system based on the premise that the entire cosmos and all that exists in the cosmos, including human beings, consists of sound vibrations, called nāda (or music).

Music is said to transcend all constructs of religion, tradition, and consciousness. Scientists propose conjectures based on 'string theory' as one possible explanation of the quantum and meta realms and unification theory. Several research and studies show that listening to music reduces anxiety, pain, depression, stress, suicide rates and helps heal faster.

Learning to Play?

Apart from listening to music, the benefits of learning to play music is exponential. A popular hypothesis called the Mozart effect suggests that listening to Mozart (or any kind of energetic music) optimizes the brains 'spatio-temporal reasoning'. But beyond just listening, based on recent research in 2017, John Dani, PhD, chair of Neuroscience at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine quoted that playing an instrument may be one of the best ways to help keep the brain healthy. “It engages every major part of the central nervous system”. Research presented at the 2013 Neuroscience conference also strongly indicates that playing an instrument (especially for children) changes the brain architecture positively for life, optimizing cognitive abilities and brain executive functions through increased brain volume and connectivity.

Only 10% of the world's population!

There were 28 million surveyed musicians in the USA in 2014 alone. That's 10% of the US population, but I believe this number is higher considering kids, hobbyists, intermediaries, and professionals combined. In fact 7 out of 10 kids in UK learns to play an instrument.

A rough triangulation of data suggests that 10% of the global population attempts to learn some form of music. That's 700 million people. I would again conjecture that is a lower estimate.

Only 10%? There are several challenges in learning to play music. One of them is boredom through rigor that is not bespoke. Music is extremely practice-based and there are several challenges when you practice.

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Learning to play music is majorly personal and time-consuming. You may have a tutor where you go for an hour's session per week, the remaining 5 days (assuming a day's rest) you are practicing on your own. That is, 85% of the music is self-practice, while 15% is tutor-led. If you are self-taught, that's 100% 'me' time. 

Challenges of a Practitioner

I started to learn metal-guitar by being self-taught in 2017 and struggled with many challenges. I believe that depending on region, culture, demography, time and temperament a good portion of people who attempt to learn music struggle from these challenges.

• I am a beginner, what is the optimal path to learning music for reaching my goal.
• There are several fragmented online destinations. Not optimal.
• I want to learn based on my time and convenience.
• Cost of tutors is prohibitive for some ($40 average for 1-hour sessions)
• I want feedback on how my practice is going while I practice.
• I want to efficiently train my ears.
• I don't want to be bored with theory but want to learn enough to understand music.
• I am an intermediate practitioner, I have 30 mins, what should I practice today?
• I need a journal that keeps track of all my practice session and amplifies my strengths and weakness
• I need a journal to catalog my musical ideas and efficiently lookup the catalog.
• I want to search for musical phrases that are based on compositional architecture of music (find songs with specific harmonic structure, in the key of e-minor at 120 beats)
• I am a professional and I am running out of ideas for composition, I need a 'music-idea-generator' with seed-compositions.
• I need validation from others on how I am performing, progressing.
• I want to participate in the community, share my musical ideas for the greater good or a small credit.
• I want to jam with others, learn from others.

The list goes on...

Based on these challenges and frustration that I (and my fellow practitioners) face constantly, I decided to create a music practice platform called Kena.AI that enables bespoke learning and practice experience for music practitioners. 

What is Kena.AI?

Kena.AI is an Artificial-Intelligence Personal Music Teacher:

• giving real-time feedback on practice sessions.
• create dynamic personalized learning paths. 
• enable search based on compositional architecture of music.
• and, generate AI-based music compositions to build-upon.

Kena is powered by an Artificial Intelligence 'Music Neural Engine' (with a mobile app as a front end interface) that shall listen into live practice session and provides diagnostic feedback on multiple aspects of learning such as: Form, harmony, dynamics, rhythm, melody, time-signatures, speed, pitch, scale etc... Kena will dynamically adjust the learning-path for an individual practitioner, based on real-time analysis of your sessions across any instrument. Kena also intends to enable music search for musicians based on keys, notes, scales, and architectural composition of music. [Stay tuned, we just started]

Spiritual Motivations

My main motivation to give life to Kena.AI derives from an expected psychic income based on the conjecture that learning music has shown reduction in bullying in schools, improving grades, math skills, overall cognitive functions, a drastic reduction in depression in adults, a reduction in alcoholism, pain and suicide rates across the world. 

If this conjecture holds, then why not dedicate yourself to making a larger impact in the world by reducing the drop-out rates of music practitioners? Why not help people practice music more efficiently? Why not unchain the realms of consciousness and new possibilities ? Why not 'Unchain Music'?

I believe that 100% of the world should be able to learn and play this purest form of subliminal expression. 

Please in making the world a better place. We need all your support and wishes to succeed. [Freedom Preetham]