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Duolingo is bringing its gamified learning style—fun, bite-size sessions on your phone—to music later this year. The new curriculum, which is free with ads and will appear in the original Duolingo app, uses an on-screen piano to teach principles like harmony, meter, pitch, and beat. You learn by interacting with over 200 popular songs (from nursery rhymes to Beethoven’s Ninth), matching sounds to notes and contributing to the larger musical piece. Karen Chow, a Duolingo senior learning scientist, says there’s a misconception that you need innate talent to learn music, but “we’re trying to break those boundaries—you don’t have to feel intimidated.”
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