Description

This activity born as a proof of concept for a piano keyboard widget, with the idea of add this widget to the existing Tam Tam suite. This widget should be usable with touch devices, as the XO-4, and support multiple touches, then we need use Gtk3 (Gtk2 only support a simple touch emulation). The port of Tam Tam suite to Gtk3 already started, but is complex and need more work.

The piano widget trigger events for every key pressed/released, and is designed to be easily included in other activities.

The part of the code needed to play the notes, is copied from Tam Tam suite. The backend is using csound, but has not been improved in a lot of time.

Repositories

The Music Keyboard repository is https://git.sugarlabs.org/simplepiano

The Tam Tam repository is https://git.sugarlabs.org/tamtam

Note the master branch in the Tam Tam repository is where the port to Gtk3 started, but is not finished. If you want generate a usable activity, should use the branch sugar-0.94

Download

Activity page in our activities portal

Google Summer of Code proposals

Two tasks are proposed for the GSoC 2013:

Add recording to Music Keyboard activity

There are code, actually commented, to record sounds in Tam Tam Mini activity. I don't know if the code is working or not, but is a alternative to explore.

The activity Tam Tam Jam use sequences of notes as loops to play. Can we save a loop in Music Keyboard? Should be good for inter-operability.

Other options to explore, is check if we can save the key press/release events, or convert to a more useful format as midi.

Display notes in a score in Music Keyboard activity

Daniel Francis proposed: "I have been working some time ago on a staff widget to show the notes [1]. Has pending to draw notes with sharps and flats (black keys in the piano)."

Another option is show the notes as horizontal bars as the Tam Tam Edit activity do, maybe is more intuitive for kids.

[1] http://git.sugarlabs.org/stafflib/test