docs - show meee



ok ok ok let's break it down...

Here's the toolbar

Hover over those tiny icons and there'll be a tooltip explaining em.
(Not here. When ya run it.)

That brain icon swaps between
an ear (listening to the song),
a finger (playing the song live),
a brain (practicing the song in short loops).

I'll go on about that later.

Here's the help menu for keyboard shortcuts (regular and piano)
Hit F12 to get it.


When PianoCheetah starts, it'll want you to pick a song.

It'll list only the songs you're learning unless All is checked.
You can sort the good songs to the top with those arrows.
There's some stats on the song to the right.

And you can search your big huge directory of midi files from here.

So let's see what the notes look like !!

We have columns of bars. Not rows of bars like in standard notation.
So your fingers align with the screen.
We also don't need to see notes we don't play.

See the 3 red dots? I was holding down those 3 keys, but they're wrooong.
And the green dot means "Hey! You didn't get this guy in time."
The green bar is where you are in time. It moves. Not the notes.
Cuz tracking moving notes while trying to play piano is unnecessary work for your eyes.

You can see the 2 black key group and 3 black key group (a little lighter n wider).
That's how you feel your way around on the piano without looking down.

Red is the note of the key signature. blue is the 5th.
There are 12 colors - one for each note of the octave.
Usually you'll see primarily 7 colors as the scale primarily uses 7 notes per octave.
With a smattering of others for, well, for color :)

A light blue hue touches the left hand and the left hand notes' little dots tilt left.
Remember Atari's Dig Dug game? Each note is a little dude. Kinda :)

And you can see the dark thick bar lines and thinner beat lines.
They change height based on note density and where the notes land.
So for example, bar 14 is pretty short cuz the notes are all only on beat 1.

Those are the main areas. But clicking in various spots brings up other dialogs.

Clicking on the keyboard picks whether to show chords or not and which "controls" to show. Controls are anything midi sends along besides notes. For example, pitch bend, modulation wheel, sliders, knobs, buttons, keytar tilt, stuff like that.

Clicking on the bottom half of a note will change it's duration.

Clicking the top half will let you change the note (sliding it left/right)

Clicking in the Cues area (yellow strip to left of notes)
will let you mark the times as verse, chorus, break, or other.
And also you can put in little symbols or text for reminders.
The sad face could be for a place that needs work.
The angry face is for tough sections :)


I'm afraid that not everything is to GUI perfection yet.
There are some things that you can do that just aren't very obvious.
(Like turn on chords, add chords to an empty song, and, eh, there's a lot :)

I'll try to make PianoCheetah better, but these things take time.

I'll also try to make these docs better. Later. :)



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