The first step in learning to play the piano doesn’t actually involve playing the piano. First, a new student needs to learn how to read sheet music. Once that is understood, they need to learn how to map those notes to the proper keys on the piano. This process can be very difficult, and many people have abandoned their dream of playing the piano because of it.
But all of this upfront work isn’t what playing the piano is really about; it’s just the ugly process that we have wrapped around it. Like most people learning to play, Mateo of the YouTube channel battiemme didn’t enjoy his time spent studying these prerequisites. So rather than put any more time into it, he spent his time hacking on hardware to avoid it. He came up with a solution that lights up each key so that he knows exactly what note to play when he is learning a new piece of music.
The system is called Pianethor, and it is powered by an ESP32 development board. It drives a strip of 72 RGB LEDs that are positioned above the keys of a piano. This device can be loaded with a MIDI file, which it converts to notes. Each note is mapped to an individual LED, and it lights it up when the corresponding key should be pressed.
The expected functionality has all been built into Pianethor. Users can adjust the speed of music playback, and there are also play, pause, and stop buttons. If you want to get fancy, you can even change the colors of different notes.
This idea is not entirely novel. Pianos with light-up keys already exist. However, this solution allows you to use the piano that you already have for learning. And aside from that, you would have a tough time finding any solution that costs less than an ESP32 and a strip of LEDs.
Check out the video below to see Pianethor in action.