NICOLE TAYLOR / Scroll
Kevin Smith, professor of computer science and engineering, demonstrates the virtual piano program he developed.

Learn the how to play the piano with virtual fingers

Jennifer Freeman FRE05015@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

If you thought you could never play the piano, think again.

Kevin Smith, a BYU-Idaho professor of computer science and engineering, has designed a software program called Virtual Fingers, which enables people to learn the piano no matter how much experience they have.

Smith wanted to design software that could be used in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint wards where no one played the piano.

He researched what was available on automated accompaniment, but found there wasn’t a good match for his particular application, so he went to work.

Smith was not alone in his work. Several graduate students helped by developing software, coding the music and designing graphics. Overall the process took two years.

Virtual Fingers has six progressive play back pieces. These include playing along, tapping the beat and rhythm, playing harmony or melody parts and learning the right or left hand. With each step the program helps less and requires more.

These techniques are learned by choosing from hymns and primary songs stored in a standard MIDI file. Personal songs can be downloaded if they are a standard MIDI file.

Some other unique features include transposing, setting tempos, muting sections, changing score instrumentation and even recording songs.

“The ultimate goal is to get off the software and onto a real piano,” Smith said. He designed it so a real keyboard would be used, rather than just watching a bouncing ball on a screen.

In essence it takes someone with “limited ability and embellishes it to make it sound professional.”

People can pretend they are playing the notes and everyone will think they can play “Beethoven’s Fifth.”

Smith once used Virtual Fingers at a funeral, with the software filling in the parts he didn’t know.

To use this software effectively, it requires a computer, a keyboard and a MIDI interface with a USB connection on the end. It can even work with the software from a Pocket PC;

Virtual Fingers can be downloaded for free.

“I wanted to bless the lives of others, so I made it available for free,” Smith said.