The purpose of a virtual keyboard is to expand the playing
possibilities of a single musical keyboard and to make it
possible to play several instruments with only one keyboard. This
principle is common in most synthesizers and is often called a
performance. It is a preset of various sounds programmed on the
keyboard and that may be used together in a performance.
A virtual keyboard is a musical object that may contain
several instruments. It takes its input from a MIDI input port
connected to a musical keyboard. If you do not have a musical
keyboard connected to your computer, you may still use the
virtual keyboard but it will be more limited, mainly because the
mouse is not easily handled to play on a keyboard displayed on
the screen.
To show how a virtual keyboard is build and used, we will
create one as an example.
- Start Pizzicato and open the conductor view. Click on the
green document icon (configuration 1) with the right
mouse button and select the New virtual keyboard...
menu item. The following window appears:

This is the dialog definition of a virtual keyboard. All
values are set to their default values. No instrument is
defined yet. For our example, we would like to have one
octave of acoustic bass instrument. To add it, we will find
it in the basic instruments of the left upper tree of the
conductor view and drag it on the keyboard.
- Open the Basic instruments folder and then the Bass
folder as explained in the previous lesson. Drag the Acoustic
bass instrument and drop it in the middle of the
above musical keyboard. The upper part of the window
becomes:

The instrument specifications of the acoustic bass
instrument have been copied into the keyboard. The brown keys
are the keys included in the standard bass instrument. You
may play on this keyboard by clicking on it or by using your
MIDI keyboard. Notice that when you play notes beyond the
limits, no sound is played. The colored notes are the notes
where the keyboard will answer for this instrument. If you
want to drag another instrument but keep the same range, just
drag it while holding down the CTRL key.
- As we do not want to have the full range, we will limit
it to one octave. To limit it to the left, click on a key
with the left button while holding down the CTRL key. To
limit to the right, click with the right button while
holding down the CTRL key. Try it a few times to
understand how it works and then finalize by setting the
following range for the bass:

Here is the explanation for the various parts of this dialog.
- The Title text block lets you specify a name for
this keyboard setup. Name it My keyboard.
- The MIDI input menu gives you the list of MIDI
input ports from which the notes will be sent to this
keyboard. By default, it takes the first MIDI input port
available in your MIDI setup.
The above two parameters are global for all instruments of the
keyboard (here above, there is only one instrument defined, we
will add other instruments further).
- The Instrument menu displays the name of the
current instrument (the one for which parameters are
displayed below this menu). With this menu, you may
access one of them by selecting it. The "<"
and ">" buttons helps you go from one
instrument to the other, without using the menu.
- The New instrument and Delete instrument
buttons lets you add/delete one instrument to/from this
keyboard.
- The Modify... button gives you access to the
current instrument specifications exactly as explained in
the lesson on instruments. You
may modify it through this button.
The following parameters are specific for each instrument
defined in the virtual keyboard. They are displayed for the
current instrument (as selected by the Instrument menu).
- The two Transposition menus may be used
respectively to add a fixed transposition, in half tones
(from -12 to +12 half tones) and an octave transposition
(from -6 to +6 octaves).
- The MIDI output menu specifies where the notes
of this instrument must be sent. This menu contains the
list of MIDI output ports available in your MIDI setup.
- 5 sliders lets you fix the volume, the panoramic, the
vibrato, the reverberation and the chorus levels for this
instrument.
- Two text boxes lets you specify the limits of note
velocities taken into account. If the incoming note is
outside this range, the note will not be played. This may
be useful if your keyboard transmits velocity. You may
define for instance three levels of velocity and define
three instruments that are progressively played when the
input velocity increases. For instance, you may set the
piano to answer to the full range of velocities (from 1
to 127). Then you may add a string instrument to play
whenever the velocity comes between 64 and 127. Finally,
you may add a brass instrument that will play only if the
velocity is greater than 100. All three instruments may
occupy the same range on the keyboard. You will then have
a keyboard that will automatically add instruments to the
orchestra as the velocity of your notes increases.
- The MIDI input channels...
button is used to specify on which MIDI channel the notes
will be listen to. By default, all 16 channels are used.
Sometimes, multiple keyboards devices sent the notes on
different channels to specify the original keyboard where
the note was hit. This dialog may then be used to
determine on which keyboard the notes will be taken into
account.
- The velocity curve is a little bit more technical. When
you play on a sensitive keyboard (a keyboard that sends
the velocity information in MIDI), the harder your hit
the key, the higher the velocity level. You may want to
adjust this progressive curve by moving the two sliders
at both sides of the velocity curve. By default, the
curve is standard: velocities are transmitted as
received. Here are two additional examples:
- No influence of the incoming velocity: all notes
are set for instance to a velocity value of 100.
You may hit the keyboard very hard or very
lightly, the resulting force of the note will be
the same:

- The full range of incoming velocities are adapted
in a small range from 80 to 110. It will
attenuate the range of velocities you play:

- The velocity / pitch curve is an additional factor that
will influence the velocity of notes depending on their
position on the keyboard. By default, the two sliders are
set to 100 (%), which means that the input velocity will
be transmitted at 100% of its value, as well to the left
than to the right of the keyboard. If you increase the
right slider to 200, for the same incoming velocity the
notes will become stronger when going from the left to
the right of the keyboard. The higher notes will be
played at 200 % of their incoming velocity level.
- Two check boxes enable/disable the incoming pedal and
pitch bend MIDI messages. It may be useful to enable the
pedal action on one of the instruments and not on another
one. Same for the pitch bend wheel present on some MIDI
keyboards.
- The Playing mode menu is by default on Normal.
It means that notes will be played as they come in from
the MIDI keyboard. If you set it on Hold, you
may play a chord and release the keyboard and the chord
will still be hold. Whenever you play another chord, the
last one disappears and the new one is hold. This is used
to play background chords or notes so that you may play
it and then use your hands on another part of the
keyboard while those notes are still playing. It is a
sort of local pedal that is released whenever you play a
new note on this keyboard range.
- The Polyphony menu is set by default on No
limit. All notes will be played. You may set the
polyphony limit from 1 to 8 notes. Set on 1, Pizzicato
will only play one note at a time. If a second note comes
in, Pizzicato will first release the current note and
then start the new note.
Let us continue with our example. We now have a bass playing
on the first octave of the keyboard. We will add on the same
range a vibes note that will be played 3 octaves higher than the
bass note.
- Click on the New instrument button. In the Basic
instruments folder, open the Percussion
folder and then the Chromatic folder. Drag the Vibes
instrument and drop it on the keyboard. The upper part of
the window becomes:

- Set the range on the same octave and add a +3 octaves
transposition. Play some notes in the colored area. They
are accompanied by the vibes.
- Add another instrument with the same button. Open the Strings
folder, then the Ensemble folder and drag the Strings
(Ensemble) instrument on the keyboard. Set the range
to have:

- Set the Playing mode menu to Hold. Play
a note or a chord inside the blue area and then release
it. The note continues to play. An important remark must
be made here: when using the Hold playing mode,
the last note of the range (here the B3 note) is used to
stop any playing note and is not used as a note itself.
So if you now play the last note, the previous playing
notes will stop. Without this, you would never been able
to stop this part of the keyboard.
- We will now add 2 percussion instruments: the bass drum
and the cymbal. We will assign them to the next two notes
just to the right of the strings. Add an new instrument.
Open the Percussions folder, then the Individual
instruments folder and drag the Bass drum
instrument on the keyboard. Set its range to be one note:
the C4 key, just to the right of the string range:

- Add a new instrument and drag the Ride cymb 1
instrument on the keyboard. Adjust the range to have:

- We will now add a last instrument to cover the upper part
of the keyboard. Add a new instrument. Open the Blown
folder and drag the Harmonica instrument on the
keyboard. Adjust the range to:

Our example is now complete. You may click on the
"-" button just below the keyboard, on the left. This
button switches between the edit mode (where you can modify and
add instruments as we did here) and the playing mode (in which
you see all instrument ranges and can play with it). The virtual
keyboard becomes:

Notice that you can open and use several virtual keyboards at
the same time. The virtual keyboard is active as soon as it is
open. When you close it, it does not play anymore. You can active
it again with a double click on its icon, in this case inside
your document.
You may now play with it and compose music!