Announcing a new Version 0.6.4 of PianoBooster

[Louis B.]

Version 0.6.4 of Piano Booster has just been released.

Piano Booster is an Open Source program that helps with playing the piano and learning to sight read music. It's key feature is that it listens and follows what you are playing on the piano and waits for you to find and play the right notes. It helps you with this by giving you audio feed back. So if you play a wrong note then that note will have the Harpsichord sound but the right notes will have the Piano sound.

A new feature has been added in this release specially for people who are not familiar with musical notation. The letter name of each note (e.g. G or F#) appears above each note on the score and also for each note you play on the piano. This feature works particularly well when using a card that you place on your piano keyboard that labels each key on your piano with it's note name. So if you want learn to read and play sheet music then maybe this is the application for you.

For screen shots see:

http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

And for a video demonstration see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGbfm8Tv-20

This versions fixes a number of issues with CPU usage and timing accuracy and so I recommend that everyone upgrades to this version. Users of Intel graphic chips please see the note at the end of this posting.

Detailed list of changes in this release 0.6.4 are:
- Added note names for beginners (to be used with a piano key note labels)
- Added assignable left and right midi channels.
- Improved MIDI timing accuracy.
- Greatly reduced the memory footprint.
- Reduced the CPU load.
- Reduced the screen flicker (recommend setting the screen refresh rate to 60Hz
     and for Intel Graphic chips updating the drivers).
- Added keyboard short-cuts. These are - speed up/down, play from start,
     play/pause, next previous song, left right both hands.
- Remembers the song settings in a configuration file called "pb.cfg".
     these are the midi channels, speed, left right or both hands.
- Now works well Ubuntu 9.10 and Intel graphic chips.
    (Those with Ubuntu 9.04 and Intel should upgrade to 9.10 and this version)
- Fixed various start up issues.
- Now correctly notates repeated accidentals that occur in a single bar.
- Added the option to display courtesy accidentals.
- Added a simple help page.
- Added an installer for windows.
- 'make install' now works on Linux.
- Now works with small screens eg an EEE-701 (for Trev)

NOTE: If you have Intel graphic chips in your computer or laptop then this causes severe problems when using Ubuntu 9.04. The problem is due the Intel graphic drivers drivers having very poor performance. They performed much worse than on the previous Ubuntu 8.10. The solution is to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10, PianoBooster works particularly well on this version


PianoBooster is licensed under GPL and runs on Linux, Windows and the Mac.

PianoBooster is available from:   http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net.


Louis B.

[seisatsu]

Dude, you completely forgot to include the CMake files. It's impossible to build this on Linux.

[seisatsu@valence-arch pianobooster-src-0.6.4]$ cd build
[seisatsu@valence-arch build]$ cmake ../src
[seisatsu@valence-arch build]$

NOTHING HAPPENS

[Louis B.]

It works OK for me. Just tested it again on Ubuntu. I get the following:

louis@lammas-laptop:build$ cmake ../src
-- The C compiler identification is GNU
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/gcc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/gcc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Looking for XOpenDisplay in /usr/lib/libX11.so;/usr/lib/libXext.so
-- Looking for XOpenDisplay in /usr/lib/libX11.so;/usr/lib/libXext.so - found
-- Looking for gethostbyname
-- Looking for gethostbyname - found
-- Looking for connect
-- Looking for connect - found
-- Looking for remove
-- Looking for remove - found
-- Looking for shmat
-- Looking for shmat - found
-- Looking for IceConnectionNumber in ICE
-- Looking for IceConnectionNumber in ICE - found
-- Found X11: /usr/lib/libX11.so
-- Looking for Q_WS_X11
-- Looking for Q_WS_X11 - found
-- Looking for Q_WS_WIN
-- Looking for Q_WS_WIN - not found.
-- Looking for Q_WS_QWS
-- Looking for Q_WS_QWS - not found.
-- Looking for Q_WS_MAC
-- Looking for Q_WS_MAC - not found.
-- Found Qt-Version 4.5.2
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /home/louis/Downloads/temp/build/pianobooster-src-0.6.4/build

I think your problem is with cmake

you would get the following message if CMakeLists.txt did not exist.

CMake Error: The source directory "/home/louis/Downloads/temp/build/pianobooster-src-0.6.4/src" does not appear to contain CMakeLists.txt.

[seisatsu]

You're right.

I had a corrupted sector a while ago and some files that still show up on the filesystem are actually zero bytes in size. Reinstalling cmake seems to have fixed the problem.

Feel free to delete these posts.

[wanthalf]

I cannot select any MIDI input nor output in MacOS X 10.6.3. But the version distributed for MacOS is only 0.6.2, not 0.6.4. Any idea what is the problem?
I have both a MIDI keyboard plugged in and SimpleSynth running and playing well from the keyboard.

[Louis B.]

I don't have a mac but does this post help.


http://piano-booster.2625608.n2.nabble.com/Help-compiling-for-the-Mac-tp2184053p2458805.html

To get 0.6.4 on the mac try this post.

http://piano-booster.2625608.n2.nabble.com/Pianobooster-0-6-4-Universal-Binary-for-OSX-10-6-tp4609494p4609494.html

http://joemartel.com/wiki/moin.cgi/HomePage?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=pianobooster-0.6.4-mac-osx-universal.dmg



Louis

[wanthalf]

Thanks, it is a bit better, but still not working well.

I can select Simple Synth as output. It works.

I still cannot select my MIDI keyboard as input. In the selector, there is (in addition to the PC keyboard) now one additional empty line - no label, no title... I hoped it was the keyboard and selected it, but still it does not work.

(In SimpleSynth and all other software I can see and choose the MIDI keyboard and it works...)

[wanthalf]

I tried to compile PianoBooster myself and it behaves exactly in the same way.
I also tried to compile the RtMidi package and it also finds my keyboard:
=====
There are 1 MIDI input sources available.
  Input Port #1: XStation

There are 2 MIDI output ports available.
  Output Port #1: XStation
  Output Port #2: SimpleSynth virtual input
=====

BTW - what about the following warnings, when compiling PianoBooster?

Downloads/pianobooster-src-0.6.4b/src/rtmidi/RtMidi.cpp: In member function ‘virtual void RtMidiIn::openPort(unsigned int, std::string)’:
/Users/wanthalf/Downloads/pianobooster-src-0.6.4b/src/rtmidi/RtMidi.cpp:371: warning: NULL used in arithmetic
Downloads/pianobooster-src-0.6.4b/src/rtmidi/RtMidi.cpp: In member function ‘virtual void RtMidiOut::openPort(unsigned int, std::string)’:
/Users/wanthalf/Downloads/pianobooster-src-0.6.4b/src/rtmidi/RtMidi.cpp:540: warning: NULL used in arithmetic

[wanthalf]

HEUREKA! I just replaced your current rtmidi/RtMidi.cpp (version 1.0.8) with the new version 1.0.11 from the RtMidi package, recompiled, and now it works like charm!
(Well, now I have the problem with blinking fonts... but I will read on...)

And the warning from the compilation, which I quoted above, disappeared too.