Instructions and FAQs: "So, how do I....."

Play Piano

Play the piano with either your mouse or your computers keyboard. To play with your computer keyboard click the "activate keyboard control button" on the right side of the piano (the button looks like a computer keyboard). The notes are all accurate. The sheet music is converted to a sequence of letters you type on the computer keyboard and it will play the actual song. So if you wanted to play jingle bells on the piano you would click the "activate keyboard control" button then type the letters for jingle bells - jjj jjj jl ghj

Choose songs

There are hundreds of songs available for you to choose from. The songs are located in 2 places, above the piano as a drop down menu or on the piano itself under the buttonbeats logo. Select a song, click the "activate keyboard control" button on the piano then type the sequence of letters (song) you selected. You should be able to play bits of Beethoven in minutes.

Piano Effects

Located on the piano are black buttons. These buttons add effects to the piano only when playing with your computer keyboard. There are 3 or 4 buttons for each effect, each representing one of the 4 available sound banks with the specified effect applied. The Echo effect produces one sound and then 2 echos of the sound with fading out volume. The layer buttons play 2 of the sound banks at the same time to produce a layer effect. The Studder buttons play the sound 5 times quickly at the same volume. The Split buttons split the piano with half being one of the sound banks and the other half being one of the other sound banks.

Record Voice Sample

The voice recorder microphones have a button that says "record voice sample from mic" Click that and then you will be prompted by flash to allow the mic to access your microphone. When you are finished recording click the "stop recording" button. Then you can click the "play recording" button to play back your voice sample. There are 2 different types of mics. One that plays your voice back faster and at a higher pitch, then there is a normal playback mic.

Play Mixers

Throughout the ButtonBeats website there are many different mixers used to play loops and samples in many different ways. Many have volume, balance, tempo, and visualization mixed in with the many loops and sound samples.

Embed Widgets in your web page

Below many of the widgets on ButtonBeats there is a text box that contains the code you would copy and paste into your website or blog. When you insert the code the widget will appear on your website. So you could take the piano and put that on your site!

Record

The Best method to record your mixes from buttonbeats is to install the freecorder toolbar in firefox. with the toolbar you can record any mixes you make and it even saves your audio file as an mp3. You could then download audacity and mix many of your mp3's together and add effects.

Download

You can download many of the widgets from the website and keep them. Navigate to our downloads section.