Review on 37 Key Kids Piano Keyboard With Microphone - Perfect For 3-8 Year Olds! | APerfectLife by Travis Garron

Just got it today. It's cute and kind of charming, but it plays many chords incorrectly. This explanation may require a bit of musical theory knowledge of chords, but I'll summarize it here and give a fuller explanation in later paragraphs.Here's the problem - play a major chord in the root position (1-3-5) - it plays correctly. Play a major chord in the first inversion (3-5-1) - it adds a minor 10th (3-5-1-b10). Play a major chord in the second inversion (5-1-3) - it plays correctly.For the minor chords, it does something similar, but messes up the second inversion instead of the first inversion.Will a three-year-old who's not a Mozart prodigy care? Probably not. The harmony issues are a little advanced for someone more likely to be drawn to the frog, bird, duck, and dog sounds.But, here's why it matters to a musician or someone wanting to use this as a convenient study tool:We have a full-size acoustic upright piano. My wife plays well, but only by reading notation on the staff. She does not yet improvise and is beginning to learn more about music theory - particularly chords and inversions. She wanted a small keyboard she could play at the kitchen counter with the idea of using it to learn and practice chord inversions without sitting at the full-size piano. Once she had that knowledge, she planned to save the keyboard and give it to our young grandson when he's a little older.But when I started testing the keyboard, I ran through the inversions and realized that something was seriously wrong with the sounds. If you are familiar with the notes of a piano keyboard but not so familiar with the numeric notation above, here's how it works on this keyboard:The C major chord has the notes C, E, and G. If you play those notes in order from left-to-right on the keyboard, and hold them down together, you are playing the C major chord in root position. If you then hold down E, G, and C from left-to-right, you are playing the C major chord in the first inversion. In this inversion the E and G are in the same place as when you played in root position, but in the first inversion the C note is played an octave above the C in root position. BUT - if you do this on this keyboard, it adds an additional note to the three you are holding down. In this case, it adds the Eb above the C you are playing. So you are hearing E, G, C, Eb. It's no longer a C major chord. Like I said above, it mangles the second inversion of a minor chord, too.Since hearing what you are playing is part of learning about the keys you are playing, this is not a practical way to use this device. On another note (heh-heh), at first I though it might be fun to bring it along to a campfire jam and play a few chords along with the guitars and mandolins and so forth. Not now. (Unless I want to use if for well-timed duck quacks and such!)Too bad, since so many other aspects are pretty decent. It has 8 rhythm patterns with a tempo control. It would be neat to be able to practice chord progressions along with the beats, but you'd have to give up a third of your three-note chord options.Anyway, our grandson is still too young for this, so this one will be returned.