· 3 min read
Piano Practice with Visual Feedback using MidiStickers Pro
Mapping musical dynamics as colors, in real-time.
Voicing Chords
One of the defining aspects of professional piano playing is the ability master voicing chords, that is, controlling the balance between individual notes, even when played by the same hand. This is done by subtle adjustments in how weight is distributed and whether finger, forearm or arm motion is employed [1].
In the early stages of MidiStickers development, one of our first “a-ha!” moments was when we added visual feedback for dynamics and experimented how we could display that directly on the staff and in other widgets. Early on, the power of synesthesically practicing the piano amazed us as it helped us increase awareness of minutae detail of voicing chords and bringing inner lines [2].
While we are still improving this feature and coming with new ways of helping piano practice, in MidiStickers Pro 1.0 this is already available as the”Color by Dyanmics” Coloring Scheme, which you can apply to many objects, including Staff notation, Piano widget and Piano Roll.
The easiest way to experiment this feature in MidiStickers Pro is to use the bulti-in “Piano Practice” Layout. In this layout, you can see multiple forms of feedback for dynamics velocity: directly on the staff, in the piano widget and in the “piano roll” widget, which can also be used for real-time feedback on articulation (ie, note lenghts).
For our next MidiSickers Pro updates, we intend to provide more customizations of colormaps. One key challenge here is dealing the wide differences in how MIDI controllers generate velocity from its inputs, and we are still experimenting on how to best implement velocity curves without making things too complicated for users.
We also are adding a setting so you can see the “raw” MIDI velocity data, for those who want to be very precise and.
If you have already tried this feature on your own, we would love to your your feedback on it. Was it helpful for your practicing?
Notes
[1] On that subject, we highly recommend Piano Tones, by Luca Chiantore, originally available as "Historia de la tecnica Pianistica", for those who want to delve deeply into the biomechanics of piano playing and how they have shaped the history of piano sounds.[2] While testing this feature, we mainly used an Roland RD-700NX stage piano, a flagship digital piano by Roland with one of the best actions in the market. We also tested many other models, and even in models with more limited dynamic ranges you can still benefit from these dynamics visualization tools.