On Screen Piano Keyboard

Command Location: View Menu / Keyboard

The On Screen Piano Keyboard will highlight notes and chords from the current score. It can be used as an aid to reading and playing the score (especially solo piano music) allowing you to quickly and easily visualise chord shapes and fingering.

In Edit Mode, notes can added directly to your score with Note Entry via the On-Screen Piano Keyboard.

Moving and Sizing the Keyboard

The On Screen Piano Keyboard works in a similar way to the other standard Windows toolbars found in MidiIllustrator, but unlike most toolbars it can also be sized dynamically even when it is ‘docked’.

The keyboard can be ‘docked’ or ‘floated’. When MidiIllustrator first starts the keyboard is docked at the bottom of the screen. As you resize the program's main window the keyboard width and height change by proportion to the main window size. MidiIllustrator will always try to make the best use of space when displaying the keyboard and its proportions will always be kept under control. As the keyboard is widened it becomes taller automatically, similarly if you increase the height of the keyboard MidiIllustrator will automatically increase the width of the keyboard.

When the keyboard is docked you can use the ‘gripper bar’ (on the left of the keyboard) to slide the keyboard to the left or right of the program's window. MidiIllustrator will try to make the keyboard as wide as the space between the gripper and the right side of the main window.

If the keyboard is floating on the page, it can be moved to any part of the screen with a simple click anywhere on the keyboard and by dragging it to the required location. The keyboard can also be resized by clicking and dragging any edge of the keyboard. Just as when the keyboard is docked, the size of the keyboard will always be kept proportional to its width.

Key Highlighting

The piano keyboard highlights keys under the following circumstances:

• In general, the notes from all visible staves will appear on the keyboard as they are sounded. Alternating staff notes are displayed in alternating colours. This is particularly useful in solo piano scores where left and right hands are clearly distinguished.

  Selecting Staves will affect the notes which appear on the keyboard during playback. If any staves are selected, only the notes from those staves will appear on the keyboard. Remaining visible staves will be ignored. This allows you to display multiple staves on the screen, and a different selection of staff notes on the keyboard.

• When MIDI In is received from an external midi device, such as a MIDI Piano Keyboard.
  
  
• In Step by Step mode the next note or notes to be played. Colours are applied using the same rules as during playback (alternating staff colours).

Full Size Keyboard

You can switch between displaying a Full Size Keyboard (88 keys) and a cropped display of the centre four octaves of the keyboard (two octaves on either side of Middle C).

Menu Commands

You can access the keyboard’s menu of commands via the View Menu or by right clicking anywhere on the keyboard.

The Keyboard Menu commands allow you to:

• show the piano keyboard on the screen or to hide it
  
• 'dock' the keyboard at the top or the bottom of the screen or to have it ‘floating’ on the page
  
• choose between a full size keyboard or a cropped keyboard (with a range of four octaves)
  
• show note names on the keyboard keys.