Red Flare Technologies Announces Launch of Crowdfunding Campaign

Indiegogo push will fund completion of MiKord guitar chord selector

Cape Town, South Africa -- (SBWire) -- 05/06/2014 --Red Flare Technologies, the premier developer of electronics products in Africa, South America, and Asia for over 20 years, announced today the launch of an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign with the goal of funding the production and stock of MiKord. MiKord is a revolutionary and intelligent auto chord selector that is poised to change the way aspiring musicians learn and play the guitar.

What MiKord Does
MiKord instantly allows new guitarists to play thousands of songs on their own guitars without having to learn a single chord. It is incredibly easy to use and is fitted in seconds onto the neck of any guitar. The musician then selects the song, downloads the chord sequence from the MiKord website and starts playing. MiKord keeps the learning process fun by playing the chords while the aspiring musician strums and learns songs in order to anticipate chord progressions.

“Now you can spend your time learning the fun stuff,” says Ian Harrison, MiKord Project Leader. “MiKord allows you to focus on making music and playing songs.”

Origins
MiKord was borne out of the frustration by new and aspiring guitar players to begin playing actual music rather than being bogged down by the tedious process of learning and successfully playing complex chords.

“So we asked ourselves: what if we could make something so that I could just pick up my guitar and start playing without having to learn a single chord?” added Harrison. “So our idea was to create something that can be used to play enough chords to be useful and that would be simple to set up and simple to use.”

Research revealed that just sixteen guitar chords played in the top three frets of a guitar allow a musician to play literally thousands of songs, including almost all of the popular sing alongs. Based on this fact, the Red Flare team designed the MiKord device, which plays any of these sixteen chords by pressing on the correct strings. The device can also program a sequence of chords for a particular song so that chord finding and successful playing becomes an unnecessary labor.

Why is MiKord Important?
Over 3 million new guitars are sold every year in the USA and the UK alone. We believe that a significant enough portion of these guitars end up neglected and forgotten soon after the shine of the new purchase has worn off and the reality of the effort required to learn how to play has set in.

In order to be able to proficiently play sixteen different chords and be able to use them to play a few songs could reasonably take a busy person the best part of a year. Professional lessons could easily cost an aspiring musician another few hundred dollars.

The MiKord team believes that by solving the basic problem of “How to play chords on a guitar without having to learn them,’ will enable many thousands more people to enjoy playing and making music.

Where does the money go?
Reaching the campaign target gives the MiKord team enough funding to put MiKord into production and purchase the stock to deliver MiKords to all new fans. Specifically:
- Finalize product design elements for the production version devices including precision engineering needed to get the final product size and weight to a minimum whilst improving the overall product look
- Produce sample circuit boards and build up a few for production testing
- Build complete and working beta samples of the production version MiKord
- Complete the injection tooling design and manufacture
- Pay the manufacturing setup charges on other items as needed
- Complete the MiKord.com website and upload a stock of initial songs and chords for free download
- Purchase the components and parts needed for the initial production run
- Pay the manufacturing costs and shipping

Crowdsourcing
The Indiegogo campaign’s initial goal of $65,000 is currently active and runs through May 30, 2014 at 11:59 Pacific Time. Full details about the Indiegogo campaign including sponsorship and involvement levels can be found at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mikord-intelligent-auto-chord-selector-for-guitars.

About Red Flare Technologies
The two founders of Red Flare Technologies have been developing products for over 20 years. During this time their various companies have put hundreds of thousands of electronic products out into markets all over Africa, South America and parts of Asia.

Media Relations Contact

Tol Bayo
Red Flare Technologies
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mikord-intelligent-auto-chord-selector-for-guitars

View this press release online at: http://rwire.com/502430