Some users suggested that I add some sort of "keyboard", like a virtual piano, so you can now use this keyboard to play piano notes. It's located on the "Window" menu.
Certain things need to be clarified here: This is NOT meant to be a replacement for a MIDI keyboard, rather, it is intended as a quick and dirty solution for people who want to try out chords. As such, the small virtual piano keyboard has some limitations:
1) You can only play "piano" notes.
2) Its range is predefined. Ideally, it should be user-configurable, and I really thought about this, but I decided against user-configuration, because the particular key mapping I use is the maximum possible on a QWERTY keyboard.
3) Two new Options have been included in the "Play->Preferences" dialog, that relate to the Virtual Keyboard:
a) Echo Virtual Keyboard to Score and
b) Key Velocity
If option a) in the dialog is checked, pressing any of the piano notes on the Keyboard, sends the note to the Score window, under the following provisions:
a) All three windows are open (Music, Cursors, Virtual Keyboard) AND the Virtual Keyboard window is the active window.
b) The music caret is visible, when the Music window is active. (This means, you can SEE the caret, somewhere inside your Music Window when this window is active. If you can't see it-because you have scrolled passed it-you will hear a warning beep, along with the actual piano note, to give you some indication that the note was not mapped onto the Score) In any case, if you have doubts about where the caret is, just place it manually with the selection cursor anywhere you want.
c) The selected cursor is a note. (Think about it: If the cursor is anything else, it does not make sense to echo a note in the score)
d) The echoed note takes its definition characteristics FROM the selected note cursor. This means, if your cursor is an eighth, the echoed note will be an eighth. If a quarter, a quarter, etc.
If all provisions above are satisfied, then you will see the echoed note appear in the score. The note's accidentals are automatically adjusted to the music window's Key Signature. Needless to say, if you make Key signature changes and then send more notes, the older notes, the ones before the key change, will not be corrected, so they will most likely be wrong.
The "Key Velocity" relates only to how the piano produces sound. The maximum velocity, is the loudest. The minimum produces no sound. It is similar to the power that's applied to the keyboard key, with all the actual limitations of the fact that this is not an actual keyboard.
However, it is kind of fun to see the actual notes appear on the Music window after the piano sounds, so feel free to experiment with this feature, which may prove to be of some value to music beginners who want to see a relationship between piano keys and actual notes.
(At some point in the future, I will add support for a MIDI interface, so keep checking the newer versions on my site.)
