L.W Pianola 1 (Player Piano) -- Plays Maple Leaf Rag! [UPDATE 1.1]

[Sheath]

Delicately crafted, finely evented.

LateralWorks 60 Key Acoustic Pianola 1

Last time, LateralWorks brought you the 44-key digital upright piano with sustain and inbuilt memory. Now, I bring you the 60-key acoustic Pianola, or "player piano". These have been around for a long time (at least 100 years) and allowed people to watch their piano play itself by inserting a piano roll into a mechanism. You had to buy a piano that could do this of course.

The Pianola 1 not only has 60 keys using a split keyboard to save space (making it 14% smaller than the last piano) but has relay activated keys, so anyone can create a piano roll by merely sending a relay to the specified key to make it play a sound and move.

The Pianola 1 comes with one piano roll to test, its Scott Joplin's great Maple Leaf Rag.
 

Click here for a demo video of the Pianola playing Maple Leaf Rag.

Technical specs:

- Pearl White traditional upright casing (footprint 8x wide, 8x high, 24x long)
- Quad Stereo sound plates (4x soundboards)
- Toggle based lid
- 60 keys, water FX animation, relay activated (25 black, 35 white, 5 octaves two down and two up from middle C octave)
- Pianola player with relay firing (accepts standard 2x4x3f formatted piano roll)
- 60 key purpose built soundpack, mono WAV 32.000khz files (92kb per key, approx 3.00mb compressed & 5.00mb non-compressed) non-sustain

This build has no event dependencies and uses default events only. However you will need to install the included sound pack.

Quad Sound Boards
Four sound emitting plates turn mono to stereo and provide a richer sound.

60 Key Keyboard
Using an organ like design, 60 keys have been spaced into the smallest footprint ever for a Blockland piano of this caliber. The Pianola 1 provides more octaves than any of LateralWorks pianos, yet is 14% smaller in length (4 studs) than previous models, making it the most compact piano yet.

Relay Touch-Sensitive Keys
Each key is built using relays, creating a more realistic sound experience. Each key has water FX animation for authentic press movement, and is rigged to respond to relays both on click and from an external source, allowing the potential for controllers and additions.

Custom Made Sound Pack
The Pianola 1 requires just one add-on; the LateralWorks custom made grand piano soundpack, featuring 60 authentic grand piano key sounds using top quality recordings, covering a variety of low and high octaves, an add-on custom made for this build. Each LateralWorks piano comes with its own audio pack.

Automated Playing with Piano Rolls
Using evented piano rolls, the player can duplicate or copy a roll into the slot provided and use the play or stop buttons to toggle playback. Piano rolls not only authentically play a song of any difficulty on the piano, but they also activate the animation to make the keys move at the same time. The brilliant 'Maple Leaf Rag' by Scott Joplin, a ragtime composition from the very early 1900's, is included as a default piano roll for your enjoyment.

DOWNLOAD HERE (1.1)

This save includes the custom soundpack, and the save with readme. Everything you need to run the build! Version 1.1 fixes a sound board disconnection, a "manufacturing" error if you will-- thanks for pointing that out Slezak!

Installation & Download Information

Your download is 3.56mb and is zipped. Please install the file Sound_Lateral60Keyboard into the Addons folder in your Blockland directory. Insert the files LateralWorks Pianola 1.png and LateralWorks Pianola 1.bls into the Saves > Slate folder in your Blockland directory. Enable the soundpack in your addon dialogue in-game, and load the file in a server.

Piano Roll Creation

To create a piano roll, you must create a 2x3x3f brick stack. The bottom brick must be flat, and contains the start of the song. The brick should fire relays to the keys based on delayed timing. The entire brick pack must be named lwpia_roll or it will not respond to the Pianola 1 playback buttons.
You can use the table below to convert notes to brick names.

About LateralWorks

I've owned and operated Ascii, MicroBlock, Lime Events, IcyElectronics, and other "brands" and groups since 2008 specializing in eventing. So what makes Lateral special?
LateralWorks is not a clan or a group-- event clans never make gallery quality builds. Its just me and my vast eventing knowledge. Good event builds take creative ideas and lateral thinking. Its about figuring out how to build entire event systems in your mind only. Its about taking an idea and making it work with the events you have.
LateralWorks is what represents my best events. Lateral is where I showcase my ideas, and dedication to revealing the raw power of events and creating some stunning and delicately crafted event builds. Few people have such strong passion for events, and I want to offer inspiration to people while providing some really remarkable and enjoyable builds to play with, pull apart, and learn from. Maybe one day, people will see the name "LateralWorks" in the gallery and click it knowing it'll be something good.

Thanks for visiting this topic. I sincerely hope this is as enjoyable for you to use as it was for me to make it.

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[Anti-Block]

I love it.


I actually play the piano, and your contraption makes some lovey chords if I may say so myself.

[Sheath]

I actually play the piano, and your contraption makes some lovey chords if I may say so myself.

:D

Thanks. I just wish I could have got the timing better, but even if I fasten up the relays they fall out of sync by milliseconds and it slowly snowballs. :c

[Anti-Block]

Yeah, it was a little slow, but it still sounds great.

[Liquid]

Heh, noticed this on Youtube before I noticed it here.
The benifits of being subscribed to 'Gamma.

[Shortcut]

You should try to make it play Piano Bass.

[Sheath]

You should try to make it play Piano Bass.

LOL

Anyone know what notes it is :o

[Agent C]

I must say, this is quite nice. I suppose I'll go test how it works now

[Wehrmacht]

hello wehrmacht inc endorses this product

[ciber spy]

Now make a giant tuba!

[Nom|Aplem|Nom]

In the video. It does lie, It is not the first piano in Blockland that plays a song... at all. Search gallery for piano and you will see that there is actually a few pianos before this one that plays a song.

Besides that, it is quite good.

[xXGhostXx]

Another Piano :|?

[Sheath]

In the video. It does lie, It is not the first piano in Blockland that plays a song... at all. Search gallery for piano and you will see that there is actually a few pianos before this one that plays a song.

Besides that, it is quite good.

Its the first player piano. A piano that was evented to play and a piano that can operate piano rolls are quite different, frankly un-comparable.

Another Piano :|?

The LateralWorks Digital piano had 44 keys, sustain, and onboard memory for recording and playback. This is a non-digital piano, and it doesn't have sustain, but it does have 60 keys and operates piano rolls.

[Slezak]

What are the "soundboards" for? I couldn't find any events in the piano that referenced them. Are they just for show?

Other than that, another awesome piano from you. I just kinda wish you used actual note names for the sounds instead of "blackt_1.wav" and whatnot. That naming scheme, no offense intended, makes it seem like you named the files to go along with this piano and not necessarily to be easily-used anywhere else.

Love the sounds though, and it's nice that we now have a 60-note range to use. Wonderful quality in the sounds too. They sound a bit like the pianoextended sounds, but I think that's just because it's another piano soundpack.

(I really wish there was a way to easily stop sounds/change their volume without mods to the engine itself. That would make the playSound event much more versatile.)

[Sheath]

What are the "soundboards" for? I couldn't find any events in the piano that referenced them. Are they just for show?

The sound boards are large plate bricks that emit the piano sound. The more there are, the louder the volume becomes. This one has 4, so each note has the sound of 4.

I just kinda wish you used actual note names for the sounds instead of "blackt_1.wav" and whatnot. That naming scheme, no offense intended, makes it seem like you named the files to go along with this piano and not necessarily to be easily-used anywhere else.

Yeah, really that is just so I can easily put the sounds onto the piano by just starting from 1 to 60 left to right. My convenience really, its not intended to be used for another build but you could since its not too hard to order the sounds from scratch. What I really should have done is named the keys more appropriately as bricks, so it is easier to make rolls. I need to post the diagram that shows how to easily make rolls. :U