Today’s post is a revisit of the synesthesia topic. Earlier I talked about an innovative new means of creating colorized tablature to promote this cross-wiring of the senses in new piano students…
Last weekend (for this installment), I thought it would be interesting to attempt to write a MIDI version of this so that I could create that same sort of feedback using color. Only this time, I would be playing the notes directly on my Yamaha digital keyboard.
requestMIDIAccess()
The magic mostly comes from the new feature navigator.requestMIDIAccess() that’s been recently added to Chrome in JavaScript.
USB cable
Of course, this needs a Type A to Type B USB cable to connect the computer with the Yamaha digital keyboard. Mine is a P-45 in case you were wondering. It also requires Yamaha’s USB-MIDI driver (available from their website).
Code
As usual, I’ve provided the source code so that you can also play with this if you’d like. Just verify that you’re on the OG-missing-C8 branch if you’d like the latest. At the moment, the master branch is just the original fork of ScottMorse’s work.
Update
The latest version now renders tablature in realtime as well as indicating the notes on the keyboard. It will do accidentals, rests and chords so far (just in quarter notes).
outsourced guru 