Synther

Description

Welcome to Synther, an interactive, intuitive, virtual keyboard. Offering support for over 15 instruments, Synther emulates a synthesizer and brings music production and experimentation to your computer! The goal of Synther is provide a musical experience that looks and feels like a real piano, through C++ and the Cinder library.

This project was inspired by my final project for CS126 (Software Design Studio) at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.

Installation

This project is currently stable for MacOS. Other platforms have yet to be tested.

This installation requires the CLion IDE

Setting up Cinder

This project requires the Cinder framework. First, we need to set up Cinder. These instructions are modified from UIUC Fall 2020 NaiveBayes

• Download Cinder (v0.9.2) for you platform
• Extract the downloaded item into a folder. We will call this folder ~/Cinder
• Follow the Instructions for building LibCinder with CMake
• • Alternatively, if using the CLion IDE, navigate to ~/Cinder and select Run -> Build

Running the Project

• Create a directory called my-projects in ~/Cinder. Navigate to my-projects and clone this repository inside.
• From here, you can run the cloned project in CLion

Gameplay

The core controls are displayed directly on the Synther keyboard. Every piano key is labelled with its corresponding control key. Every note is played for as long its corresponding key is held down.

Controls

Synther allows you to move the keyboard view to play all 88 keys of the keyboard.

Key	Action
QWERTY...	Play black notes on the keyboard
ASDF...	Play white notes on the keyboard
Up	Move the keyboard up a white key
Down	Move the keyboard down a white key
Right	Move the keyboard up an octave
Left	Move the keyboard down an octave
Space	Toggle the sustain pedal on/off, altering the resonation of the piano
n	Opens File Explorer, allowing you to change the musical instrument

Changing Instruments

Pressing n on the keyboard opens up the File Explorer/Finder with a list of directories containing instrument sound files. To change instruments, simply select the instrument's folder and press open in File Explorer. Note that many instruments have a smaller range than the Acoustic Piano. Therefore, not all keys on the keyboard will be visible for all instruments.

Credits

Sound Files

• Philharmonia Orchestra
• University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios