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Filed under: Audio, Fun, Web

KissTunes: make music online, with your keyboard

by Jay Hathaway Jun 30th 2009


KissTunes is an online service that makes it easy to play and record music using your computer's keyboard. It offers three different instruments, and all the home row keys (and a few from the row above) represent notes. You can save your song, along with any comments from friends, as a .kiss file that will open from the KissTunes on any computer.

The "kiss" in KissTunes probably refers to a show of affection, but it could also very well stand for "Keep it Simple, Stupid!" KissTunes isn't a complex compositional tool, and it's not aimed at professionals. It's more akin to a greeting card, except instead of sending cheesy canned music, you play and send the music yourself. Obviously, this isn't going to revolutionize the Internet, but it's a fun idea.

Tags: audio, keyboard, kisstunes, midi, music, record

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Web

WolframTones: Wolfram does music, mathematically

by Jay Hathaway May 24th 2009


With all the buzz about the new Wolfram Alpha search engine, it's easy to forget that Wolfram works on other projects, too. The developers who brought you Mathematica also put their algorithmic muscle to work to create WolframTones, a music composition engine. It turns programs from within Wolfram's "computational universe" into midi musical compositions of all different styles and pitches.

There are several variations for each musical style, ranging from hip-hop to classical. User-configurable options include picking the scale the composition will use, setting the midi instrument for each part, and adjusting the tempo. When you find a composition you like, you can download it as a midi, or have it delivered to your phone as a ringtone. I suspect Brian Eno would approve.

Tags: composition, midi, music, wolfram, wolframtones

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Windows, Open Source

Piano Hero: Learn to play piano, have fun?

Windowsby Jordan Running Jan 22nd 2007

Piano Hero
I took piano lessons for a couple years when I was a kid. I never became a virtuoso, but maybe if I had had Piano Hero I could have. It's an open source edutainer in the mold of Guitar Hero and the like, except with a piano instead of a guitar. It's a bit rough around the edges and definitely doesn't have the eye candy appeal of its console brethren, but if you want to improve your real piano skills (rather than your fake guitar skills), it might be right up your alley. Piano Hero works with any MIDI music file you throw at it, but currently it doesn't sync up to a MIDI keyboard--that feature will come with the 0.5.0 release promised later this month. Until then you'll just have to play along and pretend.

The Piano Hero web site seems to be sputtering a bit just now, but you can download the program for Windows from SourceForge.

Tags: guitar hero, GuitarHero, learn, midi, music, open source, OpenSource, piano, piano hero, PianoHero

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