Keyboard hits mostly right notes

Granted, the end result sounds more like New Age or techno than carefully crafted Bach, but even that's progress for those of us whose musical performances have been previously limited to the shower.

Beyond the preset stuff, Prodikeys attempts to teach musical skills.

In one module, a treble staff is displayed along with a keyboard graphic. A mark indicates which key should be pressed on the keyboard. Success -- or near success -- is greeted with applause.

More advanced lessons require hitting the right keys but doing it to the correct beat. Lessons also touch on chords and harmony, but not very deeply.

Prodikeys can import MIDI sequences, a data type specifically for music. I grabbed a Bach fugue from the fantastic Classical Music Archives on the Web and loaded the song into the Prodikeys program. The melodic line, or treble staff, appeared and Prodikeys taught me how to play it. (The bass staff was not displayed, making it impossible to learn more complicated music.)

I managed to get the melody of the Bach fugue but will require much more practice on rhythm before my Carnegie Hall debut.

Besides the "Impress" and "Learn" modules, Prodikeys offers "Easy Play" and "Perform," making it useful to musical novices as well as those who already know how to play but may not have the room for a separate keyboard.

But there's also little in the way of help in terms of proper fingering or explanation of music theory. Then again, the keyboard has a "Fun" button that automatically launches the music software. (My wife, who laughed when I first brought Prodikeys home but later couldn't stop playing with it, suggests it should be named "FunKeys." Get it?)

More serious music students will probably look elsewhere, perhaps to offerings by keyboard maker Yamaha or software-keyboard maker Adventus. Ars Nova sells hard-core software that teaches both theory and playing.

The Prodikeys' piano keyboard has only 37 keys, compared to the 88 on a standard piano, so moving to the lower and higher octaves is possible only by turning a dial. But the keys, like a real piano, are sensitive to the level of force exerted on them.

As for the computer keyboard, my only complaint is that I occasionally hit the "Fun" button by accident, launching the music software. The PC keys are relatively quiet and felt like my regular keyboard. (A plastic cover easily snaps into place to shield the piano keys when they're not being played.)

Installation was straightforward. The keyboard plugs into the back of a PC, using the traditional PS2 keyboard port, not Universal Serial Bus. The device does not support either laptops or Macintosh computers.<