Concept
I had a hard time deciding between my two ideas: a game and a musical interactive experience. But after taking my time, I decided to work on the second idea. I had a big project in mind on implementing different instruments, but after thinking thoroughly about implementing those ideas, I realized how many difficulties can appear; therefore, I decided that the best strategy would be to focus on one particular instrument but give it more flexibility and interactivity. That instrument would be the piano.
The most challenging part
While thinking about creating a piano keyboard, I came up with two strategies on how the idea could be implemented. The first one is creating a class for every key and functions inside which will either create the graphical design or program the click functions. Or I could just find the photos of the piano keyboard and assign the click functions depending on the position of the mouse.
I decided to create a class because it gives me more flexibility with animations and making changes.
But the most challenging part of creating the class is creating a sound. If I download a lot of sounds for every note, the program will run slowly, but if I choose to use an oscillator, it will not sound like the piano; therefore, I’m still deciding what should be done. I will most probably stick to importing actual music files and work on program optimization.
Design
I made a beta version of my project, which is not fully interactive and doesn’t contain all the graphical objects that would be added. I will work on the design of the keyboard, and I also came up with the idea of adding music sheets near the piano to learn new melodies.
Furthermore, I am considering the idea of implementing the click function, not only mouseClick but also keyPressed, which would allow to execute the sounds faster, creating a more natural sound. I will try to make the experience more entertaining by creating more options for a person apart from playing the instrument.