Is there any way to adjust the width of the on-screen keyboard, so that instead of showing all notes from 0-127, it can be adjusted to show just the range relevant to your setup (e.g. 88 notes, A0-C8 in my case) ? And then scale it up to fit the screen width?
I think this would help usability for setting up zones, as well as readability for working out which octave is which.
Neil
Hey Neil,
I think this would be reasonably easy to add, but perhaps instead of limiting to the 88 notes (or whatever user selects) it might be better to simply fade out the out of range notes. Otherwise how would you “edit down” a full range key range if you can’t get to it.
Also fitting to screen width - would you expect the height of the keyboard to change to make the the aspect ratio of the key still look right? That’s kind of the opposite to how it works now.
Brad
Or perhaps if the user has limited the keyboard width to less than notes 0-127, any keyboard ranges that lie outside have their drag handle at the extremities of the displayed keyboard, and if moved, they snap in. For example with a 0-127 zone, displayed on a keyboard that shows notes 21-108, the range would be shown as 21-108 (maybe with little arrows at each end to show it goes further at each end). If the arrow at 21 was dragged, the range would change from 0-127 to 21-127, essentially “cropping” to the displayed width. I imagine in practice, anyone who sets their keyboard width to be lower than 0-127 will probably never need or play notes beyond what they set.
I wouldn’t personally expect the code to go out of its way to keep the aspect ratio of the keys realistic. Many DAWs don’t. Perhaps this is something people have different opinions on, but for me the only important thing is that black notes appear when they should. Stretching to make best use of space might distort the keyboard, but should make it more readable. Also the wider you can get the keys, the greater chance it’ll be usable on touch surfaces.
Neil