How do you turn your computer keyboard into a musical keyboard? It seems complicated? I had a TRS-80 from radio shack in the mid 80s. This is a computer that hooked up to your TV and I could turn that keyboard into a piano so im hoping it wont be that difficult since this is 25 yrs later lol. Can anyone help?
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How do you turn your computer keyboard
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How do you turn your computer keyboard
Last edited by deenaya on 30 Nov 2010, 06:44, edited 1 time in total.
Re: How do you turn your computer keyboard
Every musicmaking program allows you to do that.
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: How do you turn your computer keyboard
Google "Bome's Mouse Keyboard".
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SwiftSpear
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Re: How do you turn your computer keyboard
Computer keyboards are poorly set up to work as a musical keyboard. Computer keyboards work on a binary protocol. When you press the "a" key, the computer is either reading "a pressed = 1" or "a pressed = 0" and responds accordingly. This presents 2 problems for music using a keyboard. On a real piano or midi keyboard, if you press a note softly, you get a low volume note, and likewise. That cannot be emulated by a computer keyboard. The other problem, is that computer keyboards, especially low budget ones, do weird things to timing. If I'm typing, it doesn't really matter if the letter I type appears on the screen half a second later, but that delay can make a song sound extremely awkward. Not only do you have to deal with the limitation of "the sound doesn't start being produced until the key is fully pressed" but many keyboard drivers don't really prioritize timing accuracy, they prioritize keystroke order, so they do things like add slight delay between keystrokes, which can make playing a chord sound extremely disharmonic.
The short answer, is it's trivial, just get the right kind of software to do it. The long answer, is it's not possible. A computer keyboard just isn't designed to be an effective musical keyboard.
The short answer, is it's trivial, just get the right kind of software to do it. The long answer, is it's not possible. A computer keyboard just isn't designed to be an effective musical keyboard.
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
- Posts: 14673
- Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43
Re: How do you turn your computer keyboard
As mentioned, this will do exactly what you want: http://www.bome.com/products/mousekeyboard