Flash Piano

If you ever wanted to tinker with a keyboard, or even if you need a handy reference to hear a certain pitch, the good news is that you don't have to have a piano or digital keyboard at home to do it. Here is an online piano that you can play around with.

Unlike many flash or java online pianos I've seen, this one lets the user play several keys (a full octave) without having to use the mouse. (Click screenshot below for larger image.)






Here's an example of how to play with only the computer keys (the song below is "Starry, Starry Night"):

s d g h j (Starry, Starry Night)
j h g d h j d (paint your palette blue and gray)
j h g d h j d (look out on a summer's day)
g g t d s d t g h j (with eyes that know the darkness in my soul.)

Are you a Synnie?

No, that's not a typo, and I'm not asking if you consider your soul to be in immortal danger. "Synnie" is a modern abbreviation for the term "Synaesthete" -- which describes one who has Synaesthesia.

Oh dear, I can see that I've muddled the waters further. In short, Synaesthesia happens when the brain processes input through one sense, and the input involuntarily triggers the brain to process it through another -- or several (usually unrelated) sense(s); for instance, some synaesthetes hear words in color, some see colors in music.

When I was a kid, I wondered what was wrong with people around me; why was it that I could clearly hear the colors of musical keys and tonalities, but they were oblivious to it? This was long before the term "Synaesthesia" became popular enough to be delved into again (according to Wikipedia, scientists dropped their investigation of it in the mid 1900's and only picked it up again recently).

Of course, my fellow classmates gave me the deameaning scowl that seems to be the mandatory reaction of all children when they think their peer is out of his/her head. In fairness to my former fellow kiddie companions, some of them didn't scowl; they were genuinely perplexed.

I began keeping it to myself that I thought E Major sounded very green (it also bears the smell of freshly mown grass, too!); and I refrained from saying that A Flat bathed my mind mostly with brilliantly purple hues.

Okay, you didn't hear any of that from me...
But you might have smelled or tasted it if you're a Synaesthete...

ToneMatrix

Well, here's a cute little thing I discovered during one of my random browsing sessions: it's called ToneMatrix, a neat little flash application that enables anyone and everyone to compose their own short musical piece. The only downside is that there is no way to save your piece locally or send an audio file of your results to your family & friends.

(See below for an addendum to this post. I discovered today quite by accident that there is a way to save your results, although you will not receive an audio file.

Instead, you will receive a set of numbers that correspond to specific tones and rests).

Upon first glance, the ToneMatrix appears only to be a square filled with cubes; there are 16 cubes across and 16 down. Each cube has been preassigned a tone, and all you need to do is select a cube to make it play. The fun part is that no matter what cubes you select, your results will sound very pleasing.

That's because the ToneMatrix only uses tones of the pentatonic scale, which is generally considered to have a harmonius and appealing sound. (By the way, 'Penta' means 5, 'tonic' has to do with tones, so pentatonic literally means '5 tones'.) If you play the black keys of a piano consecutively, you are playing a pentatonic scale!

You will notice in the screenshot below that each group of keys (pictured in blue, green, and yellow), contains 5 keys each. Those are the 'black keys' I referred to above; I colored them for easy reference.

Click the image to see a gargantuan version!








Addendum: How to save a ToneMatrix composition:

1. Right click anywhere inside the tonematrix after you're satisfied with your composition.

2. Select "copy" (click below image for larger version).

3. Paste the results into a text file.

4. To let others hear what you've done:

• send them the numbers that appear in your text file;
• tell them to copy the entire set of numbers;
• when they open ToneMatrix, they should right click anywhere inside the display of cubes and select 'paste'.

Your piece will instantly play for them.

My 1st example of ToneMatrix (at the top of the page) plays each tone available in ToneMatrix. Sounds nice, but it's not a masterpiece. (Here is the corresponding sequence for that image):

65536,32768,16384,8192,4096,2048,1024,512,256,128,64,32,16,8,4,2

The real joy comes when you mix up the cubes you choose (you can select as many cubes in a given row as you wish).

I like the 2nd example, though it has a very simple sound. If I were to name it, I'd call it "Thinking."

(Copy and paste this sequence into ToneMatrix to hear it!)
16386,0,2064,32,64,0,0,2,64,0,256,0,512,0,2048,0

I leave you with a challenge: *using the 1st screenshot below as a guide, select the corresponding cubes in ToneMatrix and see if you can name this tune! (Click the image for a larger version).

* As I discovered when I wrote my addendum, you don't have to follow an image guide to do this. All you have to do is copy the sequence from #1 below and paste it into ToneMatrix. ;)

I call the 2nd screenshot below on the right "Ice Cream Truck." After letting it loop a couple times in a row, it does kinda sound like one. Hmm...

Here is the sequence for the images below:

1. (Name that Tune)
512,0,512,0,64,0,64,0,32,0,32,0,64,0,0,0

2. (Ice Cream Truck)
6146,0,8,16,4128,0,73792,0,128,0,2052,0,4232,81920,80,8



Have fun creating your own pentatonic tunes!