Coloring-in Piano

Experiments and Data

"Coloring-in Piano (CiP)" is a new musical instrument that allows performers to directly concentrate on representing their musical expression by freeing them from accrate reproduction of melody-line. Even if the performer operate any (wrong) keys of the CiP, the CiP replaces the pitch of each note to always output correct notes of a piece by refferring to a music-database, whereas the CiP outputs all of the expressive elements (e.g., hitting-velocity of a key) as the performer plays.

This figure shows the structure of CiP. CiP consists of a MIDI keyboard, a music-database, a function for replacing note numbers, and a tone-generator. Before performing, it is necessary to enter the sequence of MIDI note-numbers (corresponding to pitches) of the piece to be performed into the music-database. While performing, the replacing function replaces the played note-numbers with the note-numbers registered in the music-database, based on the order in which they were entered. Accordingly, the correct note number is always output by touching any key. On the other hand, the expressive elements, i.e., note-on (key down) velocity, note-off (key up) velocity, onset/offset timing, and pedal messages, are output as the performer plays. Consequently, the replaced pitch numbers are input into the sound generator with the expressive elements preserved as they were performed.

---