Unable to see full keyboard when assigning left and right hands.

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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Ercillent
Posts: 2

Post by Ercillent »

Hello all! New user to Synthesia and I am currently assigning right and left hands to a MIDI song I recorded. I got to this screen by clicking the following in Synthesia:

Hands, Colors, and Instruments --> Custom

I have no trouble assigning notes to left or right hand. My problem is that the keyboard is cut off horizontally. That is, I can only see the upper half of each key, making it hard to see which notes I'm playing. Screenshot attached.

Macbook OS version: 10.14.6. Synthesia version: 10.6.5425. I've tried scrolling down, resizing the size of the application (making it full screen, tweaking the window size) and attempting to zoom out, but haven't had any luck. Is this normal? If not any ideas for solutions would be super appreciated. Thanks!
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cutoff keyboard.png
cutoff keyboard.png (56.3 KiB) Viewed 1899 times
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

So, (for better or worse) this behavior is by design.

In order to keep the controls at the top of the screen as simple as possible, I wanted to avoid the usual set of control icons. And because dragging around in the falling note area has a new meaning (assigning hands) on this screen, those sorts of controls wouldn't work easily, either.

So instead, Synthesia just shows the complete range of the song, zooming in as much as it reasonable can, while leaving a bit of margin on the left and right. Think of it as a kind of "auto-zoom".

I'm curious to hear why this isn't useful behavior for your case. Are you having trouble deciding on hands because you can't see their absolute position on the keyboard? Please tell me more. :)
Ercillent
Posts: 2

Post by Ercillent »

Hey Nicholas!

I super appreciate your reply. That is precisely right, it is difficult for me to assign hands because I cannot immediately determine which notes are being played.

For example, with only half the keyboard shown I was wondering earlier: is the very first note shown (in the screenshot) played with the left or right hand? Fully seeing the keys would allow me to see that the first three notes are a singular idea (outlining a D-7 chord) and should therefore be played with a single hand (A, D, then E).

Right now, associating groups of notes as "singular ideas" (and consequently pairing them to hands) is the main way I distinguish between left and right in cases where notes cluster. These ideas are more obvious / easier to see when the notes are visibly clear. It is especially difficult when songs actually become busy, while both hands are concentrated in a tight register. In this scenario, there aren't enough visual cues for hand assignment, and the enormous cluster of tightly packed green squares feels intimidating. Hopefully I explained this clearly, if you have any questions please let me know!
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

(Sorry for the wait.)

Would the smallest possible change that could solve the problem be a new button (somewhere) that simply toggled between the current "zoomed in" view and the "show me all 88 keys" view? Would that be enough to help you get your bearings? Or would it be better to have a more extensive set of controls?
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