Chirp

Chirp turns your computer or laptop keyboard into a virtual MIDI keyboard controller with 18 piano keys, 10 drum triggers and all the control you'd expect from a piece of hardware. The program produces no actual "sound" itself - instead it produces MIDI notes and messages, which in turn "drive" any music software application, MIDI instrument or plug-in soft synthesizer capable of generating sound from MIDI input. Many music software applications and soft synths include some virtual keyboard capability, but very few allow the MIDI notes to be generated using your computer keyboard. Many limit input to a mouse click, which makes chord entry and real-time playing virtually impossible. Chirp accommodates up to 7 notes on the keyboard to be played simultaneously and in real-time, allowing for even complex 9/11/13 chord entry over 2 octaves.

Chirp was designed to be a low latency controller capable of both supply MIDI notes and displaying played notes from any music application with MIDI I/O capabilities. We envisioned the primary computer platform as a Windows or Mac laptop, and most likely in a remote environment where the use of a physical keyboard is impractical, such as an airplane seat, bus seat (or even your desk at work!) Chirp allows the user to choose which computer keys are mapped to the piano keyboard keys, as well as assign the trigger pads to any MIDI event.

Chirp Features

Ports

• 16 Channel Virtual MIDI Input/Output Port (installs via driver on Windows or Mac and appears in any MIDI music host application)
• Piano Keyboard and Trigger Pads assignable to different MIDI Channels

Keyboard

• High resolution photo-realistic display - large and small display sizes available
• 18 to 21 notes mapped to computer keyboard keys for generating MIDI data with assignable velocities
• 18 to 21 on-screen keys to display incoming MIDI note data
• Note velocity controlled by graphical slide or preset values assigned to top row number keys graphical octave control allows access to all 127 defined MIDI notes

Controls

• 2 programmable continuous controller wheels operated with the mouse or glide pad - assignable to any continuous controller
• Space Bar assignable as on/off pedal (damper/sustain, etc)
• 10 trigger pads assignable to any MIDI event (on a different channel than the keyboard keys)
• "All Notes Off" Panic button
• Ability to send note data even when Chirp is not the focused application

MIDI Data Capable From Continuous Controller Wheels

• Control every MIDI continuous controller defined in the latest MIDI Specification
• Pitch Bend and Mod wheel set up as default controllers; user can define any combination of MIDI Controllers to assign to wheels

MIDI Data From Trigger Pads

• Note On/Off with assignable velocity
• Program Change messages
• Specific Controller Values
• SYSEX Messages
• Default mapping to GM Drums on MIDI Channel 10 for most commonly used drum sounds

Product Demonstration

Click on one of the links below to watch a demonstration movie on Chirp. Please note that the files are large; be sure your Internet connection speed is adequate for these downloads.

• Chirp Demo for Windows Media Player (17 Mb)
• Chirp Demo for Quicktime (83 Mb)
• Chirp Demo for Real Player (12 Mb)

For best performance please download the movie to your computer by right clicking and selecting "Save Target As" (for Windows users) or "Download Linked File" (for Mac Users.) Once downloaded, double click on the movie file name to play it.

Minimum Computer System Requirements

Windows - Intel Pentium III 1GHz or faster processor , Windows XP with Service Pack 2; Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise including 64 bit editions; Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4; Windows 2003 Server , 512MB of RAM, and the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 (or later) installed. Chirp also installs the required Adobe AIR framework during the installation process, as well as a MIDI Loopback Driver. Note - Chirp will not run on 64 bit Vista systems at this time.

Mac - Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz or faster processor; PowerPC G4 1GHz or faster processor , Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.2, 512MB of RAM. Chirp also installs the required Adobe AIR framework during the installation process.

Downloads:

- Chirp Overview

- Chirp Installation Guide

- Chirp Virtual MIDI Keyboard User Guide