contents:
What is NUTKUŚ?
NUTKUŚ is a project for children learning the music notation and playing piano. It is controlled with a MIDI instrument (an electric piano or a keyboard) connected with the computer via a MIDI->USB cable. It contains two programs, "nutris" and "nutkus".
Both programs require your MIDI device id to work (which is a number following the option "--input"). If you do not know your piano device id run any of the programs with the option "--list". A list of all devices will be displayed. Try to figure out which one is your piano. Remember that NUTKUŚ expects you to pass an input device id (a piano can have two ids, one as an input device and one as an output device). Your piano must be turned on and connected with your computer via a MIDI->USB cable.
Requirements
- SDL
- SDL_image
- libxml-2.0
- portmidi
Screenshots
| Run "nutris --input <device_id>" with an appropriate device id. It is a TETRIS-like game with randomly generated notes instead of blocks. The notes are scrolling left and there is a limited time to press the correct piano key. Once it is pressed (and is correct) the note disappears and a new one is generated. The smiled orc faces denote how many correct answers have been given. The angry orc faces denote how many wrong answers have been given. If the player fails to give the correct answer the note remains on the screen (thus shortening the time for the next answer). Press ESC to exit the game. Press ENTER to restart it. |
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| Run "nutkus --input <device_id>" with an appropriate device id. It is not really a game but it may be fun. There is an orc and four music scores. Try to play any of them. If you played them properly the orc will start walking towards the music score you played. |
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Download
The recent release is 0.0.2, released in the 11th September, 2009. It is qualified as "alpha".
"nutkuś" is hosted by SourceForge.net®. (SourceForge.net, Slashdot, freshmeat, and ThinkGeek are registered trademarks or trademarks of SourceForge, Inc., in the United States and other countries.)
The project tarball can be downloaded from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nutkus/
Thanks to SourceForge.net® for hosting the project!
Configuration
The "nutris" automatically saves an XML config file in $HOME/.nutkus/config.xml. This XML file can be manually edited to disable certain notes. Some of them can be outcommented to reflect the kid's knowledge:
Credits
The author is Pawel Biernacki (pawel.biernacki@elisanet.fi). The project relies on multiple libraries as well as tools, in particulary it uses Lilypond to generate music score images. My thanks to all the Open Source contributors!
Copyright by Pawel Biernacki, Helsinki, 2009.