Piano as Output Device — Everything Works Except Metronome

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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jrtb
Posts: 1

Post by jrtb »

I've been trying out the demo of Synthesia for a bit and am LOVING it :) Definitely considering the purchase. Awesome work! I'm a total amateur and already I find this a really helpful and rewarding tool for learning.

It works beautifully with my piano, a Casio Celviano AP-450, and required virtually no set up. (I'm using an old MacBook Pro as my piano's "sidekick".) And I love that I can use my piano itself as the main output device. This is a fantastic feature for a variety of reasons.

There is just one thing that isn't working, and I'm wondering if it's a known problem: The metronome does NOT work when my piano is the output device. The Celviano definitely has a metronome feature, which I can enable independently, but it doesn't seem to be controlled at all by Synthesia despite being set up to function that way in the settings.

Is it possible this is a bug? Or perhaps is it just not something my piano model can do? (And how would I find that out?) Happy to test possible fixes if anyone has ideas.



Mac OSX 10.11.2
Synthesia 10.2.3742
Pianotehead
Posts: 325

Post by Pianotehead »

I have a Casio PX-5S and the Synthesia metronome works fine with my piano. The PX-5S is different from your AP-450, in that it has no metronome of it's own. First thing to check, is if the metronome volume in Synthesia is not set to zero, or off. You do that by clicking the metronome sign, after you've chosen a song to play and clicked Watch and Listen Only.

If you've done this, and still no metronome, you can try changing the options for MIDI Data, in Settings - Advanced. In my setup MIDI track channels are set to Force Unique, and the other option is Use Original.

I'm not sure this will make any difference for you, but Synthesia communicates through MIDI, and it could be that the piano is not set to listen on channels Synthesia is sending on, or vice versa.
monkel
Posts: 199

Post by monkel »

It's most likely an issue of selecting the right channel. Synthesia will not use your piano's metronome feature but play back sounds by way of recreating a metronome. If your piano does not have percussion sounds (which only regular keybords are more or less guaranteed to have) then it might need some tweaking. Search the forum, there should be some hints.
Pianotehead
Posts: 325

Post by Pianotehead »

That's right, and what I was trying to say, but you made it clearer. According to the manual (click here) there are no drum beats or tones. It lists a few grand and electric pianos, organs, a harpsichord, a vibraphone and two string voices. My PX-5S has drum beats, and Synthesia finds them. It's probably using GM (General MIDI) set tones, which seem to be missing on the AP-450. The OP might also want to take a look at the Casio Music Forums, if (s)he hasn't already.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Pianotehead is exactly right. The keyboard can access its own built-in metronome, but external MIDI messages can't.

There is a (not great) workaround: set Synthesia's metronome to use a "melodic" MIDI channel instead of the percussion channel. Try this:
  1. Hold your Shift key while launching Synthesia to open the configuration window.
  2. Find the "Metronome.Channel" setting in the drop-down list.
  3. Change it from 9 to something like 1 or 2.
Now, instead of sending out percussion notes, you'll probably get something like piano notes... but at least you'll get something. While you're in there you can adjust "Metronome.FirstNoteId" and "Metronome.OtherNoteId" to adjust the pitch of the first beat and other beats of the metronome. For reference: 60 is Middle C. So you could set it to some low pitches down in the 40's to make it less distracting.
miek
Posts: 37

Post by miek »

Hi I just read this and tried it on my Casio Celviano and it works! Thanks for posting this work around as it is really helping me try to play to time!

In case it helps anyone, I set my metronome up as:
Channel 6 (Harpischord)
First Note ID 96 (C7)
Other Note 84 (C6)
Velocity 25

:D
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

I don't understand all the answers but in case of:
Options==>music devices+++> music output+++> your device==>metronome===>Enable?
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