Abstract: An apparatus for teaching a person to play a musical instrument, particularly a keyboard instrument. The chord and melody notes of a musical passage are stored in a memory in the form of chord words and melody words each comprising a predetermined number of data elements. The data elements in each chord word represent all of the chord notes for a bar of the musical passage and in addition an indicator element which indicates whether the next word is a chord word or a melody word. The data elements in each melody word represent a melody note and timing for a bar of music and an indicator element. The data words are read out of the memory in a sequential manner. Each chord word is transferred into a chord storage register where it is held until the chord is correctly played. The melody words for the particular chord are transferred into a melody storage register at a predetermined rate depending on the timing data in each melody word.