VirtualKeyboard is a highly configurable virtual keyboard for use as an Instrument, Logic/ProTools MIDI Effect plugin or as a Standalone application. Display multi-channel MIDI notes in a resizable keyboard layout to visualize the harmony, learn new songs, show what you are playing in your video demos or send notes by clicking or tapping on its keys if you don't have a MIDI controller.
VirtualKeyboard is also a live MIDI looper: tap your tempo, record, play and loop MIDI play-alongs in any DAW. Define time and key signatures and transpose your MIDI recordings quickly without having to open a DAW.
A free download of an acoustic piano is included.
Demo limitations:
The demo is free and fully functional but stops working after 3min and includes an add banner.
Current version: 1.9.1
- Stop the cursor in your DAW and still see what notes were being played (note that most virtual keyboards will clear all notes when you press stop).
- "Mute" or "Solo" MIDI channels and display their notes in different colors. To mute a channel: "Cmd"-click (Mac) or "Ctrl-click" (Win) on the MIDI channel legend or click on the "Mute" button. To solo it: Alt-click on the MIDI channel legend or click on the "Solo button".
- Make the notes fade away instead of ending abruptly to help you visualize quick runs. Use the "Fade" sliders to set their visual queue in milliseconds for each channel. Notes sustained with the sustain pedal can be set with a longer, independent fade out. Tip: set the sliders to the maximum for infinite fade outs.
- Visualize the Soft, Sostenuto and Sustain pedals and play them with your mouse (or hide them by dragging the top of the pedals to the bottom). You can also use the "Shift" key to control the sustain pedal if you don't have a physical pedal. Please click inside the plugin if the keyboard focus is lost while switching between plugins.
- Display o hide (by dragging their right border to the left) the Mod and Pitch wheels.
- Use multi-touch devices to play notes and control the Mod and Pitch wheels.
- Change the color of the highlighted notes that are on or sustained.
- Hold "Alt" to drag the keyboard horizontally with your mouse.
- Hold "Alt-Cmd" (Mac) or "Alt-Ctrl" (Win) and drag the keyboard to stretch it (changing the key width).
- Resize it: drag the bottom-right corner of the keyboard to change its height and width, drag the pedal boundaries to change their dimensions and edit the key width in the menu.
- Label the keys with their note name, octave or MIDI number .
- Hide all settings to show only the keyboard by clicking anywhere on the keyboard while holding the "Cmd" (Mac) or "Ctrl" (windows) key.
- Trigger notes with different velocities (clicking at a different height of each key if "Velocity" is 0 or send constant velocities if "Velocity" is greater than 0).
- Save/Load your visualization settings to/from a preset.
- Save your settings automatically with your DAW project.
- Play, pause and resume MIDI files at different speeds. In Settings you can define
options for it such as "Play on MIDI load" (to start playing a MIDI file when you open it). You may
also find the following keyboard shortcuts useful:
- 'spacebar': play / pause.
- 'ESC': rewind.
- 'left arrow': rewind 4 seconds.
- 'right arrow': fast forward 4 seconds.
- 'up arrow': increase the speed.
- 'down arrow': decrease the speed.
- 'del/supr': unload file.
- Record MIDI files. In "Settings" you can define several options such as "Precount
after tap", "Mute Tap" and "Play after Rec". You may also fifnd the following keyboard shortcuts
useful:
- '1': start/stop recording.
- '4': record tap tempo.
- 'ESC': cancel recording.
- 'del/supr': unload recording (delete if it wasn't saved to a file).
- "Tap to record" or "Tap to play" to start recording / playing at a live tempo.
- Transpose MIDI recordings/files. You can change the signature key of a MIDI file with or without transposing the MIDI content (depending on the "link" toggle status).
- Drag-and-drop the MIDI of the player / recorder.
- Control buttons with your MIDI controller/keyboard. Simply right click on a button to open the "MIDI learn" controls and press a pad or a note to assign that button to it.
- Play notes too with your computer keyboard. Click on 'Settings' to configure your computer
keyboard. The key mappings for a QWERTY keyboard are:
- '1 octave' mode:
- "asdfghjkl" for notes CDEFGABCD.
- "z": decrease octave.
- "x": increase octave.
- "c": decrease velocity.
- "v": increase velocity.
- '2 octaves' mode:
- "zxcvbnm" for notes CDEFGAB, "qwertyuiop" for notes CDEFGABCDE (+1 oct).
- ", ": decrease octave.
- ".": increase octave.
- "k": decrease velocity.
- "l": increase velocity.
- Use "Shift" to control the sustain pedal in both settings.
Important: please click inside the plugin if the keyboard focus is lost while switching between plugins.
- '1 octave' mode:
- Finally you can use the VirtualKeyboard standalone application to play the piano or open, play, pause, record and transpose MIDI files at different speeds without loading a full featured DAW.
This download includes 2 VST/AU/AAX plugins: VirtualKeyboard, VirtualKeyboardMidi, and a standalone application.
VirtualKeyboardMidi doesn't produce sound (it is only a MIDI plugin). VirtualKeyboard and the standalone application have a SFZ (AKA Sound Font) Sampler built-in where you can select a piano or other sounds.
- VirtualKeyboard plugin Setup:
- Cubase (option A): Click on "Devices" > "VST Instruments" on the top application menu (or F11). Add VirtualKeyboard and your Synthesizer of choice as "Rack Instruments" (right-click on the background to have this option). Create a MIDI track, select "All MIDI inputs" in the input and select your Synthesizer of choice in the output. Then go to the "MIDI Sends" tab, click on the second line of the first slot and select "VirtualKeyboard Midi In".
- Cubase (option B): Create instrument track, select "VirtualKeyboard" as Instrument on one track and select "All MIDI inputs" as MIDI input. Now create another instrument track, select your synthesizer of choice as Instrument, select as MIDI Input "01 VirtualKeyboard - MIDI Out" and click on the little speaker below the track's name to monitor it.
- Logic Pro: Add "VirtualKeyboardMidi" in the "MIDI FX" section of your mixer track or "VirtualKeyboard" in an instrument slot.
- Ableton: Insert MIDI track, select MIDI From "All Ins", "All Channels", drag and drop the "VirtualKeyboard" plugin in the "Drop an Instrument or Sample here" area, select Monitor "In". Insert another MIDI track, select MIDI From "1 Virtual Keyboard", "VirtualKeyboard" (instead of "Post FX"), drag and drop your synthesizer of choice in the "Drop an Instrument or Sample here" area, select Monitor "Auto".
- FL Studio (option A): Click in "+" to add a track with "VirtualKeyboard", then click in the top left "gears" icon of the track to go to settings, go to "plug settings" (second tab) and select "Output port 1" in the "MIDI" tab. Add another track with your synthesizer of choice, go to the track plugin settings and select "Input port 1" int he "MIDI" tab.
- FL Studio (option B): Alternatively, if you just want to use one track, you can use the "Patcher" to connect "VirtualKeyboardMidi" with your favorite synthesizer using the MIDI output cable.
- VirtualKeyboard application Setup:
- Run it as a normal program. Use it if you don't want to wait for a
full featured DAW to load or you don't know what DAW, VST, AU or plugins are yet.
VirtualKeyboard is compatible with Windows Audio, DirectSound, ASIO and Apple's CoreAudio devices. If you are runnning Windows, please select ASIO to minimize latency (and if your soundcard doesn't include an ASIO driver, try with ASIO4All).
- Run it as a normal program. Use it if you don't want to wait for a
full featured DAW to load or you don't know what DAW, VST, AU or plugins are yet.
A few links follow with MIDI songs you can download and play with VirtualKeyboard.
To add new sounds to VirtualKeyboard follow the next steps:
- First you'll need a SFZ instrument (AKA "Sound Font") containing both a
.sfz file and its samples. SFZ is an open format and there are many sounds available for free on the
Internet. A few download links for free SFZ sound fonts follow:
We recommend:- Piano: Little Lizard (small version of Alexander Holm's Salamander Piano) (free but donations are encouraged).
- Drums: MF Natural Drumset - Home Page (original page in German) (free but donations are encouraged).
- Rhodes: Stereo Rhodes from the Bandshed FTP. We couldn't find all the people involved in the creation of this sound jewel but we thank all of them for making it available.
- Next, open VirtualKeyboard and click on 'Settings'>'Open Sounds folder'. Note that this is not available in the VirtualKeyboardMidi plugin because it doesn't produce any sound.
- Uncompress the downloaded SFZ instrument to the Sounds folder.
- Click on 'Settings'>'Re-scan Sounds'.
- The new SFZ instrument will now appear in VirtualKeyboard's 'Sounds' drop-down list with its folder name.
This plugin is available in VST, AU and AAX format.
Available for Windows 10+ and MacOS 10.13+
We aim to support as many plugin hosts as possible, including (but not limited to) Cubase, Logic, Ableton Live, ProTools, Reaper, Bitwig, FL Studio, Studio One and Cantabile.
However, because there is a myriad of different configurations, we recommend you to download and test our free demo before you buy it to make sure that the plugin is working well with your system.