Piano Fall
Watch the notes of a MIDI file fall onto a glowing keyboard in time with your track, or play a MIDI keyboard and see your notes rise from the keys.
Piano Fall draws a keyboard along the bottom of the screen and drops the notes of your music onto it. Each note is a bar that falls toward its key: the bar reaches the line above the keys when the note starts, and its length is how long the note lasts. The key lights in the note's color, the line flashes and sparks fly up. The notes come from a MIDI file you load, so they fall exactly in time with the track, with no tempo to set; without a file, Piano Fall shows the notes BeamTracer hears in your stems or in the track itself, which are close but not exact. Notes From, at the top of Notes, always says which it is using. Notes you play on a MIDI keyboard rise out of their keys while you hold them. It opens on Concert: blue notes for the left hand and cyan for the right, with the keyboard fitted to the octaves the music uses, seen straight on. Camera turns it into a 3D stage you can orbit, or one the camera sweeps around on its own. By default the music's volume brightens the glow.
Open Piano Fall
Launch the visualizer with its matching left-nav entry selected.
Quick start
- Start the demo track, choose a local audio file, or enable a live input.
- Try a preset or style first, then open the section for the part of the image you want to change.
- On a control with Assign modulation, open the source picker, choose a signal, and watch the slider's live fill.
- Use Reset to Defaults whenever you want to return to the original look.
Presets and styles
Concert · Neon · Ember · Mono · Aurora · Arcade · Stage · Cosmos
Audio modulation
On a control with Assign modulation, select the activity icon to open Modulate with. Choose a named source, or choose — None to leave the control unmodulated. After you assign one, its name appears below the slider; select that name to edit the route, or use Clear modulation to remove it. The slider track shows the live signal reaching the control.
| Modulated control | Section | What the route changes |
|---|---|---|
| Note Glow | Glow | How brightly the notes and the keys they play glow. |
Settings reference
Notes
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Look Ahead | 0.8 s–6 s | How many seconds of music the fall shows above the keys; lower values make the notes fall faster. |
| Keys | FIT, 61, 88 | Fit shows only the octaves the music uses; 61 and 88 show a fixed keyboard. |
| Practice | On / Off | Learn the piece on a MIDI keyboard: the notes fall at your pace and stop on the keys until you play them. Needs a MIDI file. Pause the track while you practice; practice runs on its own clock. |
| Practice Hands | BOTH, LEFT, RIGHT | Wait for both hands, or for one; the other hand's notes keep falling. |
| Practice Speed | 0.25–1 | How fast the notes fall between the places they wait: 1 is the piece's own tempo; lower it to slow the piece down. |
| Live Notes | On / Off | Notes you play on a MIDI keyboard rise out of their keys while you hold them and float away when you let go. |
Color
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Color By | PITCH, HANDS, SINGLE | Pitch gives every note name its own color; Hands colors the left and right hands differently; Single uses one color. |
| Left Hand | Color | Color of the notes below the split. |
| Right Hand | Color | Color of the notes from the split up. |
| Hands From | FROM FILE, SPLIT KEY | From File colors each hand by the MIDI file's own left- and right-hand parts when it keeps them apart; Split Key always splits at Split. |
| Hands | Live readout | Shows the current hands. |
| Split | 36–84 | The first key of the right hand, as a MIDI note number; 60 is middle C. Used for every note on Split Key, and on From File when the file keeps both hands together. |
| Note Color | Color | Color of every note. |
| Hit Line | Color | Color of the line the notes land on. |
Glow
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Note Glow | 0–2 | How brightly the notes and the keys they play glow. Use Assign modulation to choose a source. |
| Hit Flash | 0–2 | How brightly the hit line flashes as notes land. |
| Sparks | 0–2 | Sparks thrown up where a note lands on its key; 0 turns them off. |
| Bloom | 0–3 | How far the glow spreads around bright notes. |
| Bloom Radius | 0–1 | How wide the glow spreads. |
| Bloom Threshold | 0–1 | How bright something must be before it glows. |
Audio
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Sensitivity | 0–3 | How strongly the music drives the glow and the sparks. |
Camera
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| View | FRONT, ORBIT, CINEMATIC | Front looks straight at the keys. Orbit lays the keyboard flat on a 3D stage with the notes falling behind it; drag to turn around it and scroll to zoom. Cinematic sweeps the camera around the stage on its own. |
| Orbit Speed | 0.1–4 | How fast the cinematic camera sweeps around the stage. |
| Distance | 12–36 | How far the camera stands from the keyboard. |
| Tilt | 0°–50° | Leans the fall back so the notes come from a distance; 0 stands it straight up facing you. |
Background
| Setting | Available values | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Color | Color behind the keys and the falling notes. |
| Background Opacity | 0–1 | How much of the background shows; at 0 only the keys and notes draw. |
Some controls appear only after you enable a related mode or style. The settings panel always reflects the options available for the current selection.
Tips for a better audio visualization
- To try it right away, open Notes and press Play Sample: a short piano piece plays with its own MIDI file, one track per hand, so every note lands exactly on its key in its hand's color.
- To use your own MIDI file, press LOAD MIDI under Notes From, then play the track: the notes fall in time with it. If the file starts at a different point in the song, set ALIGNMENT (s) beside it; a positive value starts the notes later. REMOVE goes back to the notes heard in the track.
- Connect a MIDI keyboard and play: your notes grow up out of their keys while you hold them and float away when you let go. Turn Live Notes off to show only the file.
- To learn a piece, load its MIDI file, pause the track and turn on Practice under Notes. The notes fall at your pace and stop on the keys, which pulse, until you play them on your MIDI keyboard; then the fall moves on. Practice Hands waits for Both, Left or Right while the other hand keeps falling, and Practice Speed starts at the piece's own tempo; lower it to slow the piece down.
- Start with Concert, then try Neon for a color per note name, Ember for orange and gold hands, Mono for white notes straight on, Aurora for a deep tilted view with a longer look ahead, or Arcade for fast notes and big sparks. Stage and Cosmos open on the cinematic 3D camera, in gold or a color per note name.
- Lower Look Ahead to make the notes fall faster, or raise it to see further into the music. Keys on Fit shows only the octaves in use; 61 and 88 show a fixed keyboard.
- Color By on Hands gives the Left Hand and Right Hand their own colors. With Hands From on From File, a MIDI file that keeps the hands on separate tracks or channels colors each hand by its own part, so a right-hand note below middle C still shows as right hand; the line under it says which part is which. Otherwise, and always on Split Key, notes below Split (60 is middle C) are the left hand. Pitch colors every note name differently, the same in every octave; Single uses one Note Color.
- Lower Note Glow, Bloom or Hit Flash if the screen gets too bright, and set Sparks to 0 for a clean look. Tilt leans the fall back so the notes come from a distance.
- Under Camera, View on Front looks straight at the keys. Orbit lays the keyboard flat on a 3D stage with the notes coming down behind it onto the keys: drag to turn around it and scroll to zoom. Cinematic sweeps the camera around the stage on its own, rising and moving in; Orbit Speed sets the pace, and a drag takes over for a few seconds before the sweep glides back. Distance sets how far the 3D camera stands from the keyboard.
- A rendered video keeps the file's notes in time with the audio. Notes played on a MIDI keyboard show while you perform but are not drawn into a rendered video.
- Use Background Opacity when layering Piano Fall over another source in Studio.