Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

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tsadi
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Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by tsadi » Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:15 am

Hi. I was wondering if it's possible to mute the sound coming from the keyboard, but at the same time keeping the keyboard sound if you use Auto-play to On.

The reason is, I prefer the sound the keyboard makes, not the keyboard sound generated by PS.

There's a setting that turns the piano sound off, however, if I use the Auto-play function at the start of a lesson (to get an idea how the piece should be played), the piano sound from Auto-play also gets turned off.

What I do then is go to User Settings > Volume > Piano to turn it back on, listen to the Auto-play'ed version, then go back to User Settings > Volume > Piano again, this time to turn it off. It gets repetitive fast.

Just leaving it turned on is not an option because the double sound from the 2 keyboards (sound from keyboard itself, and keyboard sound generated by PS) playing (almost) at the same time seem strange at times.

Image

Thanks!

davidsides
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Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by davidsides » Wed Oct 26, 2016 10:37 am

Hi,

Unfortunately, that's not a setting that's currently built into our program. I'll run it by the tech team to see if it's something we can look into implementing in the future.

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sw1tch73ch
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Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by sw1tch73ch » Sun Nov 06, 2016 1:09 am

It might be something you can do from the keyboard. Some allow you to set the keyboard to not play locally generated audio from playing the piano keys but to send it to a remote device, like your computer or tablet, but to still play incoming midi notes.

On my Yamaha YPG-635 (same as a DGX-630), which I just tested, I can call up the Function menu, select MIDI Local and set that to off. My keyboard will stop sending piano keyboard commands to the internal tone generators. The internal tone generators still respond to incoming MIDI commands though.

--

There is a MIDI Controller message that is able to disconnect the local tone generator from the piano keys, assuming the keyboard responds to it. The message is called "Local Control." Numerically it is Control Message 122 and 0 = off, 127 = on. So it is probably something Playground Sessions can do, but whether the MIDI keyboard you are using responds to it will be upto that keyboard. So you could have a Toggle for the local piano sounds for when you want them - which I would guess would also mute the PS piano audio at the same time.

Somewhere in this you might even want to consider routing the playback piano notes as MIDI to the music keyboard to get the "real" piano sound off that. I don't know how you would manage the full accompaniment though since not all digital pianos include General Midi. It's hard to emulate an orchestra if every instrument is a piano.
== Just keep playing. Just keep playing. Just keep playing, playing, playing! ==

-- jbs --

tsadi
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Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2016 12:25 am

Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by tsadi » Mon Nov 14, 2016 3:53 am

sw1tch73ch, the I issue I raised here is, that the "Piano" Volume slider controls both these things: (1) the piano sound generated by PlaygroundSessions program every time it receives MIDI data because a key was pressed on the keyboard, and (2) the piano sound generated by PS itself when you use the Auto-Play feature to listen to how the music piece is supposed to sound.

I wanted to turn off (1), but not (2).

(1) can't just be turned off from the keyboard, because the sound you hear in here is not an analog sound from the keyboard, but piano sound generated by PS based on the MIDI data it received from the keyboard.

---

I'm replying to this old post because happened upon a post from PianoWorld where someone was describing exactly the same thing I was describing here. The post was from Feb 2016, almost a year ago:
The piano sound it uses (if you're not using the one one keyboard) is atrocious, so you're forced to use the piano sound from the keyboard you're playing with. However, if you want to preview a song before playing, you have to preview it with the program's piano sound, which means you'll have to go into the options two or three levels deep to turn up the piano sound. It's such an unpolished mess.
And just like that guy, the reason I prefer to hear my own piano's sound instead of the one generated by PS, is because I don't like the sound generated by PS. Why can't I just let my piano's sound drown-out the PS piano sound? It's not possible when you use headphones. You end up hearing both sounds going at almost the same time.

So my setup is: (a) piano's midi connection connected to laptop (so PS can detect keys being pressed), (b) piano's analog audio out connected to channel 1 of a mixer, (c) laptop's headphone connector connected to channel 2 of the same mixer, (d) my headphones are plugged to the mixer's headphone jacks. With this setup I end up hearing both my piano's actual sound AND PS's output all in my headphones. No need to worry about disturbing my neighbours.


Here's the link to the full PW post by the way: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthre ... ost2515241

seant23
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Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by seant23 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 1:13 pm

Hello,

This isn't possible right now. The piano demo and piano sounds are all intertwined at the moment. We actually are reworking some things under the hood (as part of our Android version that's coming soon). After that part is done, we could definitely implement something like this. My guess would be not to expect this till early 2017 though..

kurosity
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Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by kurosity » Thu Feb 02, 2017 4:17 am

I would also really like this to be a feature!

mtn369
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Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by mtn369 » Mon Feb 18, 2019 10:33 pm

bump. I would really like this in the PC version of Playground Sessions

mariyastepanenko
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Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2018 12:09 pm

Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by mariyastepanenko » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:44 pm

We'll definitely look into implementing it in our future updates. It is on our list for review.

tigrrrlily
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Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:07 pm

Another requested feature, MIDI OUT would solve this

Post by tigrrrlily » Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:13 pm

Just registered to add that this feature OR the "MIDI OUT" feature request would be great to have. Actually, I bet MIDI OUT would solve this in the majority of cases for digital pianos with built-in MIDI engines and speakers.

rj3711
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Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 7:31 pm

Re: Possible to mute sound from keyboard, but keep Auto-play keyboard sound on?

Post by rj3711 » Thu Dec 12, 2019 6:24 pm

I've also had a similar question but had found that setting/adjusting my computer volume eliminated the duplicate sound of the midi playback coming through my speakers. I don't use headphones, so this wouldn't solve the original posts issue.

I am not familiar with what technology platform PS is written on or how closely intertwined the midi input vs playback are inside the system code, but could you literally replicate the steps tsadi was manually doing through several clicks. For example:

1. Add a MIDI playback mute button next to demo Piano demo hands.
2. Clicking the mute button could mute the midi playback...which would be the same as moving the piano volume slider to 0 (but still listen for the midi input from keys when the physical piano volume is up).
a. this could automatically turnoff the hands demo, which would make it obvious to the user that when you mute the piano midi playback, you won't be able to hear the demo.
3. If a user clicked on one of the demo hands again, it would force the mute button to turn off and set it back to the default piano midi playback volume preference from the settings.

This could reduce the number of extra clicks TSADI was performing and would be a very similar user experience to turning on or off the demo function from the lesson screen.

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