Piano Pals | Devpost

Inspiration

Having 4 musicians in the team, music is a subject that has always been important to us. Being able to play with your friends at a distance is something that a few of us had thought of but never actually acted on. When given the chance to code something on our own we thought it might be the perfect opportunity to develop this project.

This application may be very useful for piano teachers, who can use the app to schedule and teach lessons online.

What it does

With Piano Pals you can send a link to your friends and use your keyboard to have an online piano that will play music on both computers at the same time. This allows you and your friends to play music together even with an ocean in between. Feeling funky? Press the 'Get funky!' button to hear a few words from one of the greatest actors of our generation.

How we built it

We built this project using Javascript and socket programming. A piano was created and each of their keys were matched to a specific tone. Once a user enters the site, they can play the piano with others connected to the socket.

Challenges we ran into

The main difficulty was including the multiplayer capabilities into the web app. Every key that a player touched had to be seen and heard from all other players on the site. Audio quality was often not perfect, and we had to deal with issues with lag that came up.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of creating an online piano that can be played in real time by one (or many!) players at once. We think that this can be a great way to connect with friends from around the world, or play a tune for a loved one who is far away.

What we learned

We learned important aspects of web design and socket programming. We also learned that Owen Wilson sounds great on a piano.

What's next for PianoPals

Had we had to the time we have many ideas to make this project better:

First a simple record button which would allow friends to record what they play and save it so that they can re-listen to their music
Second a way to link electronic keyboards to the site so you can play on your actual instrument
Third actually add other instruments (like the drums to other simple ones) and if possible to play with actual instruments then more complex ones like a guitar
Fourth adding the full range of piano notes, as well as improving stream quality and lag.

What categories we hope to be considered for

Useless Stuff That Nobody Needs: we believe having Owen Wilson screaming WOW on your friends laptop if they forget to close the link deserves to win the useless award
Teacher's Pet: we believe in the educational value of music and hope that our app will allow us to inspire people to actually play more
Microsoft: music and education are, a social good project. we believe we are making the world a better place and hope to bring people together even if they are far from each other
Ivey: We have submitted the business plan and hope you like it ;) you can find it in the google drive link below