Re: [LAU] [ANN] Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard 0.1.0

On Sunday 31 August 2008 12:26:39 Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> This is the first public release of Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard. It is a
> MIDI event generator and receiver. It doesn't produce any sound by itself,
> but can be used to drive a MIDI synthesizer (either hardware or software,
> internal or external). You can use the computer's keyboard to play MIDI
> notes, and also the mouse. You can use the Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard to
> display the played MIDI notes from another instrument or MIDI file player.
>
> VMPK has been tested in Linux and Windows, but maybe you can build it also
> in Mac OSX and SGI Irix. If you can compile and test the program in those
> systems, please drop me a mail.
>
> The Virtual Keyboard by Takashi Iway (vkeybd) has been the inspiration for
> this one. It is a wonderful piece of software and has served us well for
> many years. Thanks!
>
> VMPK is written in C++ using two free and platform independent frameworks:
> Qt4 (4.3 or newer is needed) and RtMIDI for MIDI input/output. It uses ALSA
> sequencer in Linux, WinMM in Windows and CoreMIDI in Mac OSX, which are the
> native MIDI systems in each supported platform. See:
> http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/
>
> The alphanumeric keyboard mapping can be configured from inside the program
> using the GUI interface, and the settings are stored in XML files. Some
> maps for Spanish, German and French keyboard layouts are provided.
>
> VMPK can send program changes and controllers to a MIDI synth. The
> definitions for different standards and devices can be provided as .INS
> files, the same format used by Qtractor, TSE3, Cakewalk and Sonar.
>
> This software is in a very early alpha stage. Please feel free to contact
> me to ask questions, report bugs, and propose new features. You can use the
> tracking system at SourceForge project site.
>
> Copyright (C) 2008, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas
> License: GPL v3
>
> Web site:
> http://vmpk.sourceforge.net
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk
>
> Download sources:
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/vmpk/vmpk-0.1.0.tar.bz2
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/vmpk/vmpk-0.1.0.tar.gz
>
> Download openSUSE RPM packages:
> http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=ALL&p=1&q=vmpk
>
> Regards,
> Pedro

Very nice.

However, I have seen these work much better. Pressing two keys simultaneously
yields a considerable delay between the two notes. So you might check how you
are getting the keys--might need a lower level call?

I have also seen things thing dual-manual. One is z ... like you have your
default layout. The second is from q .... Now one sets two voices :-)

The two programs like this I have used before:

If you have ever seen the good old (very old) vpiano windows applet? No voices
but the keyboard works very nicely.

On the linux side, there is jack-keyboard which has two manuals and everything
you have and no latency. This uses jack-midi. (Jack-midi seems to disable non-
jack-midi programs right now so yours might be a better alternative!)

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Received on Mon Sep 1 00:15:02 2008