songwriters posts

A computer's keyboard and mouse have never been very good as an interface to play a virtual piano, but The Virtual Keyboard takes an interesting approach that makes the resulting music much more appealing.

While you can individually click on any key on the piano's keyboard to hear the resulting tone, where it shines is in its ability to play predetermined chords just by pressing a number key on your computer's keyboard.

Each number from 1 to 7 represents a chord from the scale of the key you're playing in. You can choose what key to play in, and even shift the chord voicing lower or higher to better approximate the sound you want to hear.

What's great about this approach is that the numbers represent a valuable musical concept: musicians often use numbers to represent chords relative to one another, regardless of the key they're playing in. So, for example, Louie Louie could be represented by "1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4" -- try it, and you'll see what I mean. It doesn't matter what key you're in, that pattern still sounds like Louie Louie when played with the right rhythm.

While The Virtual Keyboard seems like a toy or time waster, I can see it being of real value to songwriters who don't play piano, but need to figure out some chords for a song they're writing. It is limited by the fact that you can't play chords that don't naturally fall into the key the virtual piano is set to, but I'll take that simplification for the ease of use it offers in return.