Adding more sound, rhymes and g clef sign to teach on pianoli.

[cckole]

components

Pianoli is a baby game for Android that shows a small piano that can be used to explore sound on a mobile device. It has only five-piece,(do, re, mi fa, so, la) and it prevents the user from accidentally closing the app. The app has a nice sound, and I believe it can serve more purpose than what it’s currently meant to do. Improving it will make it more useful, and this is why I will like to suggest some features on the app with respect to its keys and sound.

Proposals

Rhymes (songs): This is a short song or poem that is often recited by young children. Every child love listening to rhymes. Having this feature in pianoli will be of great benefit. There will be quite a number of rhymes to chosen by users. A click on the "click the rhyme" as shown in the mock up will display the songs.

Sound of other instruments: Pianoli has only one sound, which is very nice but it would be more unique if other instruments like guitar, sax, trumpet, and so on are added. If any instrument is selected, the sound of each piece will change to the selected one.

Guide to play each piece: Pianoli does not display the signs on each piece (do, re, mi,) and the keys are not complete. It only consists of 6 pieces. Completing the keys will make it super cool. What about guiding on how to play the rhymes proposed apart from listening to it? It will be nice on the pianoli. A section will be available where options of songs to be played can be selected. After a rhyme is selected, e.g (London bridge is falling down) The sign that will teach how to play it one by one will be displayed on the keys accordingly for kids to follow. E.g,

So, la, so, fa, mi, fa, so ------- | London| Bridge| is| falling| down
Re,mi, fa, mi, fa, so ------- Falling| down| falling| down
So, la, so, fa, m,i fa, so ------- London| Bridge| is| falling| down
Re, so, mi, do ------- My| dear| lady

A sign will be displayed on the first key to be played “so” and, it will be followed by “la” and so on, which the child can follow accordingly. To make this achievable, only the key with a sign will make a sound when pressed. Others will be muted even when pressed mistakenly. It will make the playing of the song achievable. The mock up will explain better.

Mocks up/Examples

Different sounds

The G clef represents the sign

Benefits

The different sounds will make the app more unique. It will be fun and interesting playing piano and changing from one sound to another. The guide to each piece will not only teach the children the keys available on the piano but will also make them understand that every song (rhymes) has a different tone. It will make them skillful in handling this device which will improve their intelligence.

The benefit of rhymes to children cannot be over emphasized. It boosts early language development in kids. It can help a child to speak the learned words. It will help to improve the child's activeness, especially those that are usually quiet. When they are around children who know the same rhymes as they do, they recite together and have fun which helps to build social skill, and promotes a sense of community within the children. It will be fun having children listen to rhymes. It makes them happy because that is the language they understand more as a kid.

I will be glad if the proposed idea is implemented.
Thanks.

[nicolasbrailo]

Wow. Thank you for the feedback @cckole, it's super detailed. Looks like you put a lot of thought and work in it! It probably makes sense to split your suggestions in different tickets as different features (eg: new sounds is easy and I'd love to do soon, rhymes probably requires more time). A few comments on each:

Pianoli has only one sound, which is very nice but it would be more unique if other instruments like guitar, sax, trumpet, and so on are added

I'd LOVE to get this in today. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a sound pack with an applicable license (although I'm not sure the piano sound pack I'm using now has the right license either). Do you know any sound packs we can use? Something using creative commons or any other open source license should work.

Pianoli does not display the signs on each piece (do, re, mi,) and the keys are not complete. It only consists of 6 pieces. Completing the keys will make it super cool

Actually, it (kind of) does! It goes from do to do, but the number of keys displayed depends on your dpi/resolution. I decided to keep the width of the keys constant and only display whatever fits on a screen. This is because otherwise kept get tiny (unusable) keys in low dpi devices and too big (boring, bigger than a real piano) keys in high dpi devices. I don't have an elegant solution to this problem. Any suggestions?

Guide to play each piece

Love the idea! I'm trying to think how to implement something like that while keeping it simple enough for a one-year old (its current intended audience, my daughter!). Ideally, the option would be selectable in a menu that can't be accidentally triggered, like the exit button is implemented now. It's ugly enough as it is, so I'm thinking someone with UI experience should take a look and recommend how to implement that.

[cckole]

@nicolasbrailo, Thanks for appreciating the proposal. About the sound pack, I don't know the one you used but you can try KORG Vst and see if it will work fine.

Concerning the resolution you mentioned,you can go through these links to gather more information.

https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support

https://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screendensities

https://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes

Lastly, the guide to play each piece would not work for a year old baby. As much as I would have loved to bend that to her advantage,its not realistic. Until she is old enough (between 2 - 3 yrs) to notice something consciously, she will keep pressing piano at random. You can get a UI designer as you've mentioned to come up with a nice design that would help you bring out the beauty of this project. I see it beyond where it is now. I will be happy to see pianoli with more than 800,000 downloads. Thanks for your wonderful reply once again. I appreciate it. Can't wait to see the next version.

Thanks.

[juleskers]

2023 ticket review, since PianOli has come a looooong way since these proposals were made in 2018 (😲)

• Rhymes (songs)
  • Auto play songs as keys are mashed #28 covers this, I believe. This is baby-level song playing, since any key plays the correct next note.
  • we don't actually "show" the songs/rhymes yet in any way, though the song definitions do have the lyrics as (non-program-accessible) comments.
  • Rhyme display will wreak havoc on the required translation efforts though.. Nursery rhymes are extremely culture-dependant. Should we show all rhymes for all languages? Language selections? Where will we even get non-English rhymes?
  • Additionally, our target audience (babies and toddlers) can't actually read yet.. And by the time they can read, our screenlocker is probably easy for them to bypass..
• Sound of other instruments
  • we have piano, guitar, music box, sine wave, and vibraphone/xylophone. (of course, more are still welcome!)
• Guide to play each piece:
  • I love this idea, and I think it would be a natural extension of the song-player from Auto play songs as keys are mashed #28. Rather any key being correct, as is now, the "next level" could use the already available song-info to mark the correct note with a symbol (G-clef! ), and only advance the song if that key is touched.
    • Other notes could play an error sound (slightly distorted instrument note? Sad trombone? Error buzzer? No sound at all? Shouldn't be too de-motivational for the child).
    • Depending on ones pedagogical preference, upon wrong notes, progress should either reset to start of song (like my piano teacher used to do), to avoid bad sequences going into muscle memory, or just not-advance until the right key is tapped (especially intuitive if no error-sound is played at all)