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.

Karaboss is now able to display the chords contained in a MIDI file.
Chords can be displayed dynamically, i.e. at the same time as the lyrics (for singing along with an instrument, for example), or at a standstill for more detailed study of a song and its accompaniment.

The chords of a song can be obtained in two different ways:

They can be written manually in the song lyrics.
For example: the text “[Am] Little house [G] on the prairie” indicates that you should play the chord “A minor” and then “G”.
Karaboss will extract the chords from the text and display them above the lyrics.
Adding the chords to the lyrics represents a considerable amount of work, but in return, the chords displayed will be exactly those you have chosen.
Or they can be automatically discovered by Karaboss, which is still a little experimental 🙂 and therefore less accurate than the first method. But in return, it’s much less tiring.
Note that chords placed voluntarily in the lyrics take precedence over those discovered by Karaboss.

The chords are written in international format (C, D, E, F, G, A, B)

I. Displaying chords in the karaoke window

Simply press the “Chords” checkbox in the right-hand panel of the karaoke window, and the chords are immediately displayed above the song text (whether already present in the lyrics or discovered by Karaboss).

Press the checkbox again to return to normal mode: karaoke without chords.
In the case of a file containing the chords written in the lyrics, this is rather indigestible, as can be seen below:

II. The “Chords” module

Click on the “Chords” button in the explorer to access the “Chords” module.

This module has three tabs

• A first tab displays the song’s chords in the form of a grid
• A second tab displaying the chord map
• third tab that displays the song text with its chords.

1. The chord and lyric line

The first tab displays on a line each beat of a bar, with the chord to be played and the syllables belonging to that beat. When the song is started, this enables the musician to play the right chord at the right moment, and possibly sing along with the song.

To make synchronization easier, the song scrolls on the screen, with the square corresponding to the beat and bar played highlighted.

The button bar can be used to enlarge or reduce the size of the squares.

2. The chords map

The second tab displays the chords map contained in the MIDI file.
When the song is started, the box corresponding to the beat is highlighted.

The button bar lets you

• enlarge or reduce the size of the cells.
• exports the chords map in PDF format

3. The score

The third tab displays the score of the song, qith lyrics and chords above the text.

The button bar lets you export the score to

• PDF format
• Text format

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).

An overview of the main Karaboss functions

When the application is launched, the Karaboss explorer is displayed. It positions itself on the last location used in the previous session.

You can launch a MIDI file directly by double-clicking on it, edit it, and add it to a playlist.
This home page also provides access to Karaboss’ main functions. Guided tour :

The “HOME” button :

allows you to re-center the explorer at the root of your song library.

The search engine :

search your song library, looking for any string in the name of your files.

The explorer (this page):

navigate through your library of music files and start playing a karaoke file by double clicking on it.

The playlists manager:

manage lists of songs and organize your parties in advance.

The “ARTISTS” button:

launches a search on web services on internet and allows to find all the recordings of an artist as well as the words (essentially in the Anglo-Saxon world)

The Karaoke MIDI player:

Accessible by double clicking on a file in the explorer or via the “PLAY” button that starts playing a music file (.mid or .kar). If the file has lyrics, the karaoke window will be displayed automatically.

The score editor (MIDI sequencer):

Accessible via the “EDIT” button that opens a file in edit mode or the “Files”> “New” menu that opens a new MIDI file in creation.

The virtual piano:

Even if you can not read the scores, learn to play the piano with falling notes!

The virtual guitar

Learn to play guitar faster with notes displayed in real time on a guitar neck.

Chords

Karaboss now recognizes chords in MIDI files..

Screen captures of Karaboss

Some screen captures of Karaboss in action: the home page with the file explorer and all its functions, the karaoke window, the playlists, the score edition, the virtual piano and demonstration videos.

The explorer

The karaoke player

The virtual piano

Videos Youtube :

• Ray Charles – Georgia On My Mind
• The Hansome Family – Far From Any Road (True Detective)

Play guitar

Video Youtube

The score editor (MIDI sequencer)

Classic mode

Piano-roll mode

A small introducing video