Allegro Multimedia / Fisher Price Deal Opens Doors to Music-Making Fun for the Next Generation

(I-Newswire) February 8, 2006 - Tampa, Florida � February 2006 � Allegro Multimedia and Fisher-Price�, Inc., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. (NYSE: MAT), recently signed a strategic licensing agreement that harmonizes Allegro's Piano Wizard method with Fisher Price's innovative commitment to music education. The agreement allows Fisher Price to introduce Allegro's technology into the toy market as part of the "I Can Play� Piano system that features the Piano Wizard Method.

Piano Wizard is a revolutionary teaching platform changing the way kids are learning piano. "Our strategic partnership and licensing agreement with Fisher Price ensures that future generations of children will use the Piano Wizard method as training wheels in discovering a life-long, love of the piano, ultimately helping to create many more musicians," says Chris Salter, CEO of Allegro Multimedia and inventor of Piano Wizard.

The Piano Wizard method is inherently different from other music-teaching approaches, introducing the actual playing of real music as an amazingly simple interactive video game. The ground-breaking technology allows virtually anyone to play songs within minutes and transforms the tedious and traditional methods of piano practice into an exciting video game! Piano Wizard can make the first few years of a child's musical experience fun instead of torture, like having training wheels for the piano.

"Piano Wizard's simple interface allows players to learn by doing, simply by hitting the right key at the right time, as Bach so famously put it hundreds of years ago," Salter says. "Because the game can subconsciously teach music essentials to children at such a critical development stage, they can learn music deeply and intuitively, almost as if it were a native language, which is how we believe Mozart processed and assimilated music at such a young age."

"In the same way children subconsciously learn to organize parts of speech by hearing and speaking, by playing the Piano Wizard game, children begin to absorb and deduce basic music theory," Salter continues. "Foundations of structure and fundamentals are being set without needing to know how to read. Much like we all learn our native languages by speaking, kids can subconsciously absorb the underlying mathematical logic of music, the grid of pitch and time, by playing. Only with Piano Wizard, it streams by as simple color coded game characters, not difficult to master hieroglyphics."

This year, Fisher Price is focusing on developing high-quality toys in the musical arts and the use of the Piano Wizard method in its upcoming I Can Play � piano system will aid in achieving the goal of helping kids learn naturally, and painlessly, through musical play. "We are looking forward to a continued relationship with Fisher Price and setting the stage for a revolution in music education, particularly as it affects early child development and the well known subsequent benefits to math and SAT scores in later life," Salter said.

"Given our expertise in the creation of unique learning platforms and our understanding of the value of musical play, we recognized the Piano Wizard method as the perfect basis for our new generation of musical toys," says David Allmark, general manager and senior vice president, Fisher-Price. "Fisher Price together with the Piano Wizard method will begin to instill a lifelong love of music in children worldwide."

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