A piano plugin for Sublime Text, which shows a virtual keyboard/piano which can play midi.
This is still in active development at the moment. Stay tuned!
Currently, this plugin requires Sublime Text build 4050 or later, because it was easier to get/build the dependencies for Python 3.8 than for 3.3.
sudo apt-get install libjack-jackd2-dev libasound2-dev
python38 -m pip install -r requirements.txt --user
Then copy the following from your (python3 -m site --user-site) folder into ~/.config/sublime-text/Lib/python38 (or equivalent if on another OS):
rtmidi/mido/pynput/(currently not used)Xlib/(would be used bypynput)six.py(would be used bypynput)
Ensure you have FluidSynth installed (sudo apt install fluidsynth), and open QSynth. (If you have never used it before, click on Setup and go to the Soundfonts tab and open a sound font. You should only need to do this step once.)
This is a custom DSL, loosely based on the old QBASIC "PLAY" command syntax, but with support for Solfege style notation.
See the tunes/ folder for examples. If installing from Package Control, you may want to use the View Package File command to access these in ST.
I suggest having a 2 row layout, showing the piano in one row (Command Palette -> Show Piano), and opening a piano-tune file in the other row. Then, play it using the command palette entry.
Eventually, it would be nice to have the following additional features, in no particular order:
- use
pynputinstead of keybindings to more accurately tell how long a key is held down for and thus how long the note should play for, currently the keybindings rely on the user's keyboard repeat delay and rate being similar to mine... - record a song from the piano, play it back later, export it to midi or
piano-tune(maybe create apiano-tunelive as you play) - clickable controls for rewind, fast forward, pause etc. - ideally in a static position so they are easy to access
- mouse button press duration on a piano key should affect the note length
- a falling note / "waterfall" mode for helping to learn songs, as popularized by "synthesia"
- show the notes on a staff? (not sure that it would be possible to draw a vertical line across the staff when playing though to indicate the current time if the staff is a rendered image, but maybe sticking with ASCII would be usable?)
- highlight notes missed/incorrect when playing along
- export and import MusicXML
- other TODO items in the codebase
piano-tunefiles - a way to find repeating notes, so the user can move them to a label etc. to make it clearer what repeats- user configurable how many notes minimum have to repeat i.e. 2 common consequective notes isn't interesting, 8 or more might be
- maybe a way to mark notes down or up a semi-tone etc. so that sequences starting from a different key but with the same pattern can more easily be recognised
- auto complete label references in
piano-tunefiles
It would be great if one could connect a midi instrument and highlight the notes/keys pressed in ST. I have no such physical hardware / midi devices, so if someone wants to contribute support for this, I'd be happy to make you a maintainer.