PianoFlex Player help

PianoFlex Player is a piano that runs on your Windows PC. It plays Session Player, a grand piano with a balanced, even sound that suits almost any music. It's the same piano as in PianoFlex, our full piano program.

PianoFlex Player doesn't play back recordings of a piano. Instead, it works out the sound of each note as you play it, from a model of a piano's hammers, strings and soundboard built on measurements of real grand pianos.

There are two ways to play it:

• With ComposerFlex. PianoFlex Player comes with ComposerFlex, our program that composes piano music. ComposerFlex writes the songs and the Player plays them, so you don't need a keyboard.
• From a MIDI keyboard connected to your PC.

Contents

• Getting started: playing ComposerFlex's songs, or playing from your keyboard.
• With ComposerFlex: how ComposerFlex and the Player work together.
• If something doesn't work

The window

• MIDI in shows the MIDI keyboard the Player is listening to. When the Player starts, it chooses the first keyboard it finds. If you have more than one, click MIDI in to choose another. The Player listens to every MIDI channel, and the sustain, sostenuto and soft pedals all work.
• Output sets how the Player shares your speakers or headphones with other programs:
  • Shared plays through Windows along with every other program. This is the usual setting.
  • Exclusive gives the Player the sound device to itself, so you hear each note a little sooner. Other programs can't play sound on that device while the Player has it.
• Volume sets how loud the piano is. A limiter holds the loudest moments just under the top, so the sound doesn't clip when you turn it up.
• Room sets where you hear the piano: Studio (the setting it starts with), Dry, Living Room or Concert Hall.
• All notes off lets every key and every pedal up at once, if a note ever keeps sounding; the notes then fade as their dampers stop them.
• The meter shows how loud the sound is.
• The keyboard lights up the keys being played. You can also click or slide on it to play.
• The pedals, to the right of the keyboard, show the Sustain, Sostenuto and Soft pedals as they're used. The Sustain bar fills as far as its pedal is down, and the Sostenuto and Soft bars fill when their pedal is down. Click or drag along the Sustain bar to set it yourself, and click Sostenuto or Soft to put that pedal down or let it up. Point at a pedal to see what it does.
• Help says in a few lines what the Player does, shows the list of keys, and has a button that opens this guide. Its dim line links to PianoFlex on our website. About shows the Player's version and the credits.

Keys

• + and −: turn the volume up or down.
• Esc: let every note go, or close a box.
• H or F1: open Help. A: open About.

PianoFlex Player is free to use. For more pianos, there's PianoFlex, our full piano program: 33 built-in presets, every slider to shape their sound, a plugin for music programs, and recording and rendering. See flexmusiclabs.com/pianoflex.