Final Project - Modular midi keyboard with falling notes display¶

Introduction¶

I really like playing the piano but I currently can’t find time to learn notes properly (and actually when I was a teenager it prevented me from learning it).
But recently I started playing it again but tried a different approach. I just learn with below videos and found out with those, what series of notes sounds good to me and is fun to play. And so I continued to learn with those videos and also try and error my self to find fitting note-combinations and just learn the physical skill to play the piano. And this approach keeps me going, I continue to sit on my keyboard and play stuff, that comes to my mind.
But learning this way is not that great, I need to pause the Youtube videos, look whats played, rewind, etc.
There is also software like Synthesia which simplifies this process but a hardware-implementation would be the nicest solution to learn.

What is does¶

Modular midi keyboard -> assemble as many octaves as you need
Falling notes display for showing the notes of a loaded midi-file to learn keyboard without needing to learn the notes

So the hardware-implementation of this:

Here are some software-tools for learning:

Synthesia - A software to use above visualisation approach to learn playing
Piano Booster - A software which taught notes sequentially while playing

Also I can try to come up with a solution to combine this learning approach with learning notes.
One idea would be an integration in Piano Booster or maybe also a hardware-module.

Target Group¶

For everyone who:

want’s to learn playing the piano but don’t really have time to learn the notes (learning the skill is hard enough)
want a compact, modular keyboard they can extend as they need

Design-Sketch¶

With modular I meant that I can choose, how many octaves I need, can transport it easily in my backpack and extend its use with additional buttons/modules.

So designed like this Kickstarter project I took inspiration from.

Here some first sketches: