iGetIt! QWERTY keyboard component, v.000001

Here's my first crack at implementing the iGetIt!/JIMS note-layout on a standard computer keyboard:



PLEASE NOTE: you must click on the component with your mouse before it will start recognizing keyboard presses. Other than that, the on-screen keyboard does not respond to mouse clicks; you play it by pressing the keys of your computer's physical keyboard.

This component is not done by any means. It suffers from myriad annoying little problems. However, the basic functionality is there. You can use your computer keyboard to control musical notes in the iGetIt!/JIMS note-layout.

The pitch slider changes the pitch of "Re0," which is the note controlled by the QWERTY keyboard's 'H' key. This allows you to "change key" to any arbitrary frequency in a one-octave range. It should be noted that the selected pitch does NOT need to match the pitches defined by the standard A4=440Hz concert pitch in 12-tone equal temperament tuning; the structure of (harmonic) musical sound is the same for every frequency and tuning.

I do not propose that such a pitch slider is a good user interface for changing keys during performace. It's just a tool for demonstrating that the pattern of (tonic solfa) notes used by the iGetIt! keyboard stays the same, no matter what frequency is chosen as its key.

Each button displays its QWERTY label, its note name (e.g., Re0 on the keyboard's H key), and the coordinates of that note in tonal space (e.g., [0, 0] for Re0). The note Re0 is the "origin," which sounds the pitch chosen using the Pitch Slider. The pitch of note [x, y] is (x*P8 + y*P5) cents away from the pitch of Re0, where P8 is the octave (1200 cents) and P5 is the tempered perfect fifth (currently defaulting to 700 cents, with no user interface for changing that default). (If you think that sounds complicated, check out the formula for determining the pitch of a note in 12-tone equal temperament.) The coordinates are displayed for debugging purposes; no novice music student needs to see them.

An octave's notes are numbered from Re, rather than from Do as is typical. This is not a feature of the iGetIt!/JIMS music system; it's a bug that I haven't addressed yet. Notes are traditionally numbered from D0 and I see no reason to change that.

Each button's information is drawn poorly, due to problems that I do not yet know how to fix, but it's legible.

If it doesn't work on your browser/computer configuration, please let me know.

"View source..." doesn't work, because I don't yet know how to make the source available. Once I figure that out, I'll come back and make it work.

Thanks! :-)