Category: Presentation

Play guitar with Karaboss

Karaboss has a new module made for bassists and guitarists.
Learn your favorite guitar tracks with Karaboss: Play a song and the playing notes will appear on a virtual guitar neck where you have to put your fingers!

How?

A video is available here.

Select a song in the explorer and click on the “Guitar” button  on the left navigation bar to display the virtual guitar.

How to use the virtual guitar?

Each of the guitars included in the MIDI file is displayed and plays its own score.
You will find generally a bass guitar and one or several guitars.

Bass guitars are colored differently from other guitars.

• To remove one or more guitars from the display, click on the “X” button.
• You can also slow down or speed up the performance of the song by clicking the “+” and “-” buttons.

What is it for?

Obviously, the display algorithm of positions often gives a very approximate result and far enough from what a normal guitarist would use.
(a normal guitarist does not have fingers twenty centimeters long).

A priori, the perfect algorithm should not be simple…
See this thesis from Elias Mistler proposing to use neural networks :  Generating Guitar Tablatures with Neural Networks

or this one, from  Daniel R. Tuohy:
Creating Tablature and Arranging Music or Guitar with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks

That said, this module, very visual, allows to apprehend a piece faster.

How do I edit a song’s lyrics?

Karaboss lets you add easily lyrics to a MIDI file song, or modify the existing lyrics.

The syllables will be synchronized with the melody and will be displayed colored at the right time in the Karaoke window.

Listen to my advice, always use a copy of your original file. This will avoid many unpleasant surprises.

There are three possible cases:

1. The file already has lyrics and you want to edit them. This is by far the simplest case. You just have to replace each syllable of the melody by a syllable of your “invention”.
2. The file has no lyrics, but there is an instrument that plays the notes of the melody. We will rely on the notes of the melody to add the words syllable by syllable: a note = a syllable.
3. The file is purely instrumental.
   No lyrics, no melody. Good luck if you are not a musician.

1. Modify existing lyrics

You want to edit the lyrics of a karaoke song in order to correct them, or to make a pastiche of a known song for a birthday or a wedding.

This is by far the simplest case: just replace each of the existing syllables with other syllables and you’re done.
A short tuto is available here.

How to display the editing window?

Open the file to modify in “Edit” mode, or launch it by double-clicking on it from the Explorer window, and stop the MIDI player.

Display the lyrics editing window as follows:

• Either, from the player window when stopped, select the “Edit” menu> “Edit lyrics
• Either, from the Karaoke window (the one where the lyrics are displayed): click on the “Edit lyrics” button.

The window that appears allows you to replace existing lyrics with new lyrics.

Modify existing lyrics

You can replace for example “Summertime” by “Autumntime” in the following song.
Remplace the syllabe “_summ” by the syllabe “_Aut“, then the syllabe “er” by the syllabe “tumn” and let the syllabe “time” unchanged.

Some rules:

• Add a space to separate words (displayed as an underscore in the “Text” column)
• Click on the button “Insert a line break” to create lines.
• Click on the button “New paragraph” to distinguish verses.

2. Add lyrics to a melody

Your MIDI file has an easily recognizable melody. This time the mission is a little more delicate: You need to locate the track that plays the melody. This will allow you to  use the timing of the notes to stall perfectly the syllables of the words.

Notes:
Both formats are possible “lyrics” or “text”

Suppose we want to add lyrics to the file “Red River Valley.mid” which does not have any.

At this level, you must be able to identify the track that plays the melody (it is often enough to start playing the song and watch the track that plays the notes exactly at the right time.

We note first that the melody is played by track 2 (indicated Trk 2, Track 2 in English). It is important to find the right track, because we will synchronize the lyrics with the notes of this track.

Launch the Lyrics Editor:

Click on the “Edit” menu> “Edit lyrics”

Choose the synchronization track:

Select the melody track that will be used to synchronize the syllables of the lyrics. (check preferably “Lyric Format”, you will see the words appear under the notes of the track of the melody)

And that’s where it goes bad …

A window that seems complex at first glance appears and it is now a question of replacing the numbers of the column “Replace by” by the syllables of the song.

But you will see, it becomes clear as water of rock.

The idea is to type each syllable of the song in the boxes of this column “Replace with” and to add a space between each word (on the last syllable of the word) to separate them.

In short, I will type “From + space”, “this + space” etc …, that is:
From_
this_
val
ley_
they_
say_
you_
are_
go
ing_

and we get this wonderful result:
The text of the song is even displayed on the right.

Once you have typed the first line of the song (“From this valley they say you are going”), you have to add a “carriage return” before starting the seizure of the second line (“We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile “) otherwise all the text of the song will be on a single line

Simply click on the button “Insert CR”, which will have the effect of inserting a line “cr” in the table and will tell the Karaoke player to go to the next line when viewing the song.

Entering the second line can resume
We_
will _
etc …

And if we click on the button record, we can see the lyrics appearing under the notes of the track of the melody …

3 – No lyrics, no melody

Well, the best way in my opinion, is to add a medoly first, using the score editor, and then you are in the second case.

So much for this first contact with this word editor.
And… good luck !

How to edit a music score with Karaboss

It is very easy: the editor is accessible through the player, but is hidden by default. So in order to edit a music score, it is necessary to make it visible by hitting the key “F12” or with the menu “Display”> “Midi Sequencer”.

Note: if you choose to “edit” a file from the explorer window, the editor is displayed as well.

The “Edit” button

Click on this buttons swith to the edition mode and allows to perform changes with the mouse.

Notes selection

The notes selection allows to

• copy, paste,
• delete,
• transpose
• etc…

The “N” button

The entry of notes is activated by clicking on the “N” button or from the keyboard by pressing the “Control” and “n” keys (Ctrl + n)

Then you have to choose the duration of the notes (ronde, white, black etc.) by clicking on the corresponding button with the mouse or via the keyboard: the + and – keys allow you to go from one duration to another.

The notes can be entered either with the mouse or from the keyboard by typing the letters (C, D, E, F, G, A, B)

• Change of active note with left & right key of the keyboard
• Delete current note with “Del” key
• etc…

 

Easily create a partition from scratch with Karaboss Embedded Editor

Karaboss has an embedded editor hidden by default in the player. It makes it possible to create and modify your partitions, and even to export them in PDF format and to print them.

How to start?

From the explorer windows click on the “File” menu and choose the “New” submenu.

Choose time signatures

A first window named “Create a new partition” offers you the following choices:

• Signature: 4/4, 4/2 etc …
• Tempo
• Number of measures (this one can be modified later)

 

Choose the instrument and the key

A second window then offers you to add a new track to your score:

Your score may have as many “tracks” as you want.
A track that can be the right hand and the left hand of a piano score or one of the instruments of your score (piano, violin, guitar etc …)

You have the following choices:

• Name of the track; it is a free name that you can assign to this track (default “Track1”)
• Channel: 16 channels, numbered from 0 to 15 are possible (channel 9 is reserved and must be used if it is a percussion track)
• Key: treble or bass

The score editor

The editor appears, which allows you to enter notes on an existing staff (track), create or delete staves, assign an instrument to each staff.

Learn more about editing scores

 

 

Presentation of the Score Editor of Karaboss (or MIDI sequencer)

Karaboss also has a score editor and allows you to create, edit and print your MIDI files.

 

Both editing formats are available: you can edit your scores with classic notation, with notes, staves as in the picture above, or with the Piano Roll.

The Piano Roll is another way of representing the notes, in principle simpler than the classical notation, but it would be illusory to think to be able to create partitions knowing absolutely nothing to the music.

The notes are represented by rectangles, placed at different heights (grave at the bottom and acute at the top) and of different length (the longer the rectangle is, the longer the duration of the note is important)

• Vertical: the pitch of the note is indicated next to the piano key
• Horizontal: the duration of the note

How to display the editor

The editor is hidden by default. It can be made visible in many different ways:

• From the explorer by selecting a MIDI file and clicking on the “edit” button.
• From the player window by clicking on the menu View> Midi Sequencer (shortcut key F12)
• By choosing to create a new partition from the explorer: menu “File”> “New”

The editor is displayed. This allows you to enter notes on an existing staff (track), create or delete staves, assign an instrument to each staff.
The piano-roll is available via the menu “Display”> “Piano-roll”.

Print a score

To do this you must export your score in PDF format: click on “File” menu> “Print PDF”
This command will generate a PDF file that you can print.

A virtual piano in Karaboss

Karaboss can now teach you how to play the piano!
Even if you can not read the scores, learn to play the piano with falling notes.

How to do ?

First, select a piano piece in the explorer of Karaboss.
Two: click on the new “Piano” icon button on the left toolbar and that’s it.
When the song contains several  tracks, they are displayed in different colors.
Typically:  left / right hand for the piano.
You can remove unwanted tracks with the score editor

Keyboard shortcuts make your life easier:
You just have to type “space bar” to launch the player, “space bar” again to pause and when paused, “left key” to stop.

And if it’s going too fast or too slow, hit “+” or “-” keys to speed up or slow down the tempo.

See these videos on Youtube :

Ray Charles – Georgia On My Mind

The Handsome Family – Far From Any Road (Soundtrack True Detective)

Tips:

You can build your own files with the music score editor by removing tracks and keeping only the piano track and then split the remaining track into two tracks to have left and right hands.

You can even print your music scores in traditional notation using the score editor of Karaboss (export to PDF format an than print).

The karaoke window of Karaboss

In combination with the player, the karaoke window is an independent window that  can be displayed on secondary screen.
You can keep the explorer,  the playlists manager and the player on your PC. The karaoke window will be displayed in full screen on another display: typically your TV, or whatever else.

This independent window is adjustable in size to fit the size of your screen.

It is also possible to change the color of the letters, the wallpaper, to display a slide show, or even a transparent background (the lyrics are displayed directly on your screen)

Help with singing Karaoke

Yellow balls scroll to the top of the screen, and land on the green ball at the top left to indicate the syllables to sing.
The display of this option can be removed in the parameter window.

Access to the settings of the display:

This parametrization window is accessible from the karaoke window : move the mouse over this window: a fugitive button bar appears for a few seconds and allows you to manage main parametrizations:
– Resize the karaoke window (normal, maximized, iconified)
– Show lyrics in a text file
– Start to modifiy or to enter lyrics.

Settings overwview

A MIDI player simple and efficient

Karaboss’s karaoke MIDI player is accessible from the explorer by double clicking on a file or by clicking on the “play” button.
It proposes all the classic functions: “play”, “pause”, “stop”, as well as “next” and “previous” in case of a playlist.

• Playing a single file
  • Play, pause and stop
  • During playback, it is possible to move forward or backward  by moving the horizontal scrollbar.
• Browsing a playlist:
  • The “next” and “previous” buttons allow you to navigate through the items in the playlist. In this case, the songs are started immediately, without pause or countdown.
• Settings:
  • Volume
  • Song specific:
    • Change the tempo:, speed up or slow down the song.
    • Transpose the song in order to adapt it to the pitch of your voice.
    • Mute the melody track (“Melody” button)
      Note that you can chose to mute finally the melody in the settings of Karaboss.

Other settings allows to

In case you are playing a music instrument (like a guitar), the functions are doubled in the keyboard:

• Spacebar: play
• Spacebar (again): pause
• Left arrow (if paused): stop

Note :

In order to display the score editor (the MIDI sequencer), just click the Menu  “Display”> “Midi Sequencer”, or press the F12 key.
A new hit on F12 will hide it again.

The playlists manager

As indicated by its name, the playlists manager allows you to manage lists of songs.

The typical interest of this feature is to allow you to organize your karaoke parties in advance by preparing songs lists. This will save you a tedious search of your music file library that may break the mood.
You can specify the name of the singer who booked the song.
The songs are automatically chained with a delay or a pause between each song.

It can obviously be used for many other purposes (French singers, favorite songs, singing, sheet music for piano training etc …)

How to start a playlist?

Just double click on any file in the list and the Karaoke player starts playing the playlist from the selected song.

How to add a song to a playlist?

From the “explorer”, “search” and even “playlists” pages: click on the “add to playlist” button and choose the playlists from the drop-down list to add your song to an existing playlist, or choose ” new playlist “to add your song to a new playlist. You can also right click on the selected song.

How to create a new playlist?

The button bar at the top of the playlists list allows you to create and delete empty folders and playlists.

Folders are used to categorize your playlists.

Search songs in your machine with the Search  Engine

As the name suggests, it allows you to search your music files located in your “library”.

The music file library

It’s a big word to simply refer to where you store your music files.

The idea is that they are all under the same tree and not scattered everywhere in your computer.
By default, Karaboss considers that they are in the library “My Music”.
It is of course possible (and even desirable) to modify this location to possibly specify a subdirectory of “My Music” or any other place.

Avoid network disks or any other “slow” device, because the search engine will have a hard time responding to you as quickly as you would have liked.
In general, it is advisable to gather them in the same place, to avoid scanning your entire hard drive.

When a scan is performed, the search engine will browse the entire tree of your library and will create a file containing the name of the files and their location in order to speed up the search.

 

Tips:

It is strongly recommended to use the following standard for naming your files:
<author> – <song> .mid (.kar)
Example: Adele – Hometown Glory.kar

This way you can search by author and song name.

It is also better to regularly scan your library to take into account the additions of new music files (click on the scan button).