Midi Music Flash Cards -- Sight Reading TrainerGo To New Version 3.0 Page (Feb 2010)
 README-MFC-1.0.3 VIDEO: Learning Piano (5.7M) VIDEO: Learning Trombone (24M) IMAGE: My Setup Download MidiFlashCards-1.0.3.tgzDownload MidiFlashCards-1.0.3.zip
|
|
New Prototype 1 New Prototype 2 New Prototype 3 (best) Note: You need jdk-1.6 browser plugin b/c applet compiled with 1.6 News (October 8, 2009): An entirely new application is underway being developed. It is pure java, without all the dependencies of the original MidiFlashcard application. Here is another screenshot. The choice to make it pure java rather than using python+wxWidgets, for example, was largely due to the ability of Java to play MIDI through a web browser. To that end, this new effort is being developed both as a browser-embedded web applet, as well as a standalone Java program. The two versions differ by their single toplevel file, so maintaining both ways is not so bad. As of today, what is there is the base functionality, which itself is about to be significantly modified in the near future. You will need a java-enabled browser to successfully load the applet. WHAT IT IS: This is a MIDI sight reading trainer for Linux, and now Windows. Basically, it is a "follow the bouncing note" exercise. You can practice in any key, choose from a variety of note modes, and adjust the delay times between flashcard display and note playback by the system (during which you are supposed to play the note). The application can be used with any instrument. It is completely standalone, ie. it does not interface with any instruments. It does play the notes via your computer's sound system, but your instrument is completely separate and played by you. It could be an acoustic piano with this application running on a laptop in front of you, or it could be configured for bass cleff and B-Flat while you practice your trombone. In my case, I have my MIDI keyboard plugged into the microphone jack of my soundcard, and both the application and my keyboard play through the computer speakers, but the application and the keyboard never have anything to do with each other. HOW TO USE IT: Sit down with your instrument and somehow get this application running on a screen in front of you. Select the key you wish to work in from the KeySigMode menu, select the general LH-RH structure, ie. "Single LH/Chord RH", etc, from the NoteMode menu, select the "auto" run-mode from the RunMode menu, and select the "Simultaneous" stacking mode from the StackingMode menu. Now adjust the left slider along the bottom of the flashcard panel so that it is positioned somewhere in the middle of the available range; this sets the time interval between showing of the notes and playing of the notes, ie. the time interval during which YOU are supposed to play the notes -- before the application plays them to you for confirmation. When the application plays the notes it simultaneously shows the info structure in the bottom panel. The middle slider sets how long this info stays around before proceeding directly to the next flashcard. The last slider sets the time interval between notes during playback, proceeding from lowest to highest. The default is zero, in which case the notes are played simultaneously. Having finished configuring the application, now push the "run" button and begin your practice. The application will generate a new set of notes with the key signature you have set. You play the notes, and soon the application plays them, too. Then comes the next set...and so on... After several hours of this exercise there will come a time at which it all suddenly becomes automatic. WHAT IS IT DESIGNED TO DO? Follow the bouncing note! Or ... to dynamically generate an infinite sequence of random notes to be played in a particular key. Every flashcard is built on-the-fly via a system call to the LaTeX interpreter (Ghostview, actually -- a low-level part of the LaTeX system, I believe it is correct to say). So nothing is hard-coded, everything is dynamic. Since the flashcard image creator runs in a separate thread, you can make changes through the menus in real-time while the application continues to generate new cards. In this way you can create some interesting new music. I particularly like using the mode "Single LH/Chord RH" in D-Flat Major. In this mode, then, as an example, the application will pick random LH notes and random chords for the RH (Right Hand). They don't always sound good together, but other times they sound really good together. For that reason, there is the "save" button. The "save" feature is not very robust, at present, and so should be used carefully, but it allows you to save and playback some things that were generated during your session. More documentation on that, later, maybe. Meanwhile, just play with it, carefully, to see how it works. Note that it creates/saves files into the main application directory, so it's messy like that. Oh well... MORE INFO: Here are the chords known unto the application: Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented, Major 6, Minor 6, 7, Major 7, Minor 7, 7 Flat 5, 7 Sharp 5, Diminished 7, 9, 7 Flat 9, 7 Sharp 9, Major 7 +9, 9 Flat 5, 11, Augmented 11, 13, and 13 Flat 9. The piano logic is all contained in the file "keyboard.py", so you can see how things are organized by browsing that file. The application attempts to construct appropriate inversions to fit notes withing reasonable proximity of the center of each staff. The application knows about every key signature, and all controls are implemented. In addition to various NoteMode combinations there are also some "scale" options, one of which, "Scale LH/Scale RH", is shown in the animated slide, above. It's not a very useful feature, it's just included in the slides above to show an alternative to the "Simultaneous" StackingMode. CREDIT: MusicTex library (v5.17) by Daniel Taupin. There are a couple different music systems for LaTeX, and this (MusicTex) package is a bit difficult to locate, as I recall, so I have simply zipped-up the whole development directory, including the MusicTex files, for convenience. IMPORTANT: Since the flashcard-generator runs in a thread, the application can get out-of-sync if the LaTeX compilation process takes longer than the interval you have set, in which case the notes will cease to correspond to the picture. In this case, just stop and give it a second to finish playing whatever it's got back-logged. Since Java is involved, sometimes it may even be necessary to kill-and-restart the application. The first thing you should do when the app starts up is put a little time interval between flashcards via the first slider. FUTURE: This is software, so it is never finished. Did you know? With TuxWordSmith you get English Scrabble, French Scrabble, German Scrabble, Italian Scrabble, Greek Scrabble, Latin Scrabble, Dutch Scrabble, Swahili Scrabble, Spanish Scrabble, Russian Scrabble, Ukranian Scrabble, Swedish Scrabble, Icelandic Scrabble, Norwegian Scrabble, Finnish Scrabble, Brazillian-Portuguese Scrabble, Arabic Scrabble, Hindi Scrabble, Turkish Scrabble, Czech Scrabble, Kurdish Scrabble, Hungarian Scrabble and more, all in one application!
|
Last Updated Sunday, September 04 2011 @ 10:26 CDT|21,070 Hits 