[LAU] PianoBooster version 0.5.0 has just been released

[hollunder at gmx.at]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:56:51 +0000
"Louis B." <louisjbarman at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> Thanks for all your comments.
> 
> I would be interested to hear if anybody has got Piano Booster working
> OK, especially those of you who have tried playing along with a piano
> Keyboard. (Has any body tried the Easy Play Beethoven? Did you manage
> to make the accuracy bar go blue?)
> 
> <q> Any plans for JACK audio and JACK midi support? </q>
> 
> Not at the moment my highest priority is improving the latency. To use
> PianoBooster you have to shut everything down including your search
> for the next highest prime number!! By the way how do find the latency
> on your setup? Piano Booster cannot buffer any Midi Events as it
> responds in real time to what you are playing.
> 
> <q> 1. Choose track or tracks to play. That now enables any midi file
> and instruments besides the piano. Note that certain instruments use
> different staves than the two piano cleffs so a full implementation is
> more difficult. Minimally, let my choose the two tracks for piano
> staves since this is the focus of the program.</q>
> 
> You can already choose _any_ track to play and also it should work
> with _any_ MIDI file. I am thinking of automatically adding av8 marks
> so that if it goes too high or too low for the dual piano clefs it
> will be displayed an octave higher or lower with the av8 mark. This
> should be particular good for the bass part which are often great to
> play along to. It automatically will split the right an left parts of
> a single track at middle C. Currently to get it to uses two tracks one
> for left hand and the other for the right hand you need rewrite the
> MIDI file to uses MIDI channels 3 + 4 (this is a convention for MIDI
> piano accompaniment files) and set both these instruments to the use
> GM Grand Piano patch.
> 
> <q>2. Option to display more of the score (limited by screen real
> estate but the view in the screen shot seems very large. Zoom in/out?
> </q>
> 
> The view of the score score is deliberately restricted to reduce the
> CPU usage to help with the latency on slow machines (until the real
> time hooks have been added to the code). However as the screen is
> drawn using OpenGl then this should in principle be easy to add. As is
> zooming in and out. But when sight reading music you only need to see
> one or possibly two bars ahead.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> L o u i s
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Louis B.
> <louisjbarman at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > PianoBooster version 0.5.0 has just been released, this is the first
> > ever release of PianoBooster.
> >
> > If you dabble in music and have a Midi Piano keyboard lying around
> > then give PianoBooster a go as it actually makes sight reading music
> > fun!!!!!
> >
> > To see what it is all about take a look at the screen shot:
> >
> >   http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/images/LinuxScreenShot.png
> >
> >
> > First choose a MIDI file (the Easy Play Beethoven is a good one --
> > see the download page for where this can be found) then select
> > which part that you want to play along with (e.g. the piano part or
> > the strings part etc). Then select the "left" hand or the "right"
> > hand or if you are feeling really brave choose "both hands" and try
> > to play along. The "Follow You" mode make it really easy to sight
> > read the scrolling notes as the whole accompaniment will stop and
> > wait for you to find and play the right notes.
> >
> > The accuracy bar monitors how well you are playing. If you are
> > skilled enough the accuracy bar will go right to the end and then
> > turn blue. But every time you are too slow or playing out of time,
> > then the accuracy bar slips back a bit.
> >
> > You can watch a video of it in action on YouTube:
> >
> >   http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7YaDllVreuM
> >
> > Piano Booster 0.5.0 is released under the GPL and is available at
> > SourceForge on this page:
> >
> >   http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/download.html
> >
> >
> > L o u i s   B a r m a n

Thanks, this sounds really great. I'll try it once I figured out how to
build packages on my new system.
As it happens I just started to learn piano, so it could be of some
help to me. I could also try to compare your app to the learn function
of my e-piano.
well, probably not before next week..

Philipp