Re: [fluid-dev] What Aere has been working on

[Aere Greenway]

On 06/12/2014 11:26 PM, David Henningsson wrote:
> Interesting stuff. For me, who already can play piano, it would have 
> been interesting to have something when you're away from home and 
> don't have a piano in your backpack.
>
> This approach would not fit me, though. Not so much for the lack of 
> touch sensitivity as for the lack of keys out of the scale decided by 
> the chord. There is no way, AFAICT, to play a D7#5#9 or a C13#11, as 
> the scale you play is determined by the current key and/or chord. But 
> then maybe this software is mainly targeted towards beginners, rather 
> than people like myself.
>
> Btw, a link to FluidSynth somewhere would have been nice (but not 
> required). And I assume you follow LGPL so that it will be possible 
> for users of your software to recompile and update FluidSynth 
> independently.
David:

Thank you for looking at this and your feedback.

The easiest way to play your D7#5#9 chord, is using standard chords 
(rather than modal chords), and specify "D" "7" "aug" "/F#" (playing the 
sharped-9th as a slash-chord note).

Any accidental specified by the current chord is normally (you can 
over-ride that) inserted into the melody, so you don't need to play it 
manually in the melody (but you can).

Doing accidentals is like typing a capital-letter (only you use Page-Up 
(for sharp), or Page-Down (for flat).  You can specify accidentals for 
chord root-notes, as well as slash-chord notes, and they then also apply 
to the melody.  It uses Page-Up/Page-Down because you can reach them 
with your chord-hand.

The numeric keypad (chord-pad) also has keys with multiple functions, 
accessed by double-presses, so the "6" (6th) key becomes "11" or "13".  
Likewise, "aug" becomes "-5", and "9" becomes "add9" or "-9".

The 9th, 11th, and 13th chords normally include the 7th.

The easiest way to play your C13#11 is to play "C" "13" "/F#" (playing 
the sharped-11th as a slash-chord note).

The modal chords (shown in the application screen-shot), stick to 
chord-notes fitting the key-signature (unless you override them), and 
are useful for improvising with other players, who thus don't have to 
suddenly deal with unexpected accidentals.

We do target this at beginners (with the aim of having a higher 
percentage of them succeed in learning to play), but it is very useful 
for accomplished keyboard players such as myself.

For me, I can play amazing music using it, and only need to carry a 
laptop, an amplifier, and my external typing keyboard.  For my last two 
performances, I just hooked the laptop into the house sound-system.

Another thing that's very useful about this instrument, is that with one 
hand, I can simultaneously play very-high, and very-low notes. If you 
would like to see an example of this capability in action, check out the 
video below (of my improvisation of a string-orchestra piece):

http://vimeo.com/97492108

Our use of Qsynth (and FluidSynth on distributions like openSUSE) is 
limited to Linux, where they are available (as a dependency) from the 
repository.  I think compiling FluidSynth is beyond the capabilities of 
ordinary users, so its use is documented only for Linux.

We could provide a web-page for related links, including to your 
web-site.  If you would like this, I will be happy to comply.

I think something we should do, is point out that all of the demo's 
(except one audio demo using ZynAddSubFX) were performed on Linux, using 
the Qsynth (FluidSynth) software synthesizer, with the FluidR3_GM 
soundfont.  On all of the videos, I used what I call 'composite voices', 
where there is a main sound, with a (lower-volume) other-voice in the 
background.

Again, if any of you would like to use the KeyMusician Keyboard when 
you're away from home and don't have a piano in your backpack, I would 
be honored to provide you a free copy of the application. It's the least 
I can do to pay back the years of enjoyment I've gotten from using Qsynth.

I have even used it at a church camp-out, teaching people (even 
non-musicians) to improvise music together with it.

--
Sincerely,
Aere