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Show HN: Pianoterm – Run shell commands from your Piano. A Linux CLI tool(github.com)
33 points by vustagc 3 hours ago | 14 comments

A little weekend project, made so I can pause/play/rewind directly on the piano, when learning a song by ear.

pimlottc 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Some other existing utilities for triggering commands with MIDI signals:

- https://gitlab.com/enetheru/midi2input

- https://midimonster.net/

Arkanosis 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's nice!

That may not seem like an obvious use-case when only thinking about a piano, but since it's mapping MIDI keys to commands, I guess it should be able — or at least no very far from being able — to map ergonomic MIDI controllers to actions that are not as ergonomic with the usual keyboard / mouse / trackball / touchpad most people use.

I wrote what I believe is a similar tool but with completely different goals initially: https://github.com/Arkanosis/smhkd ; I use it with a cheap MIDI controller (namely the KORG nanoKONTROL2) and was considering using another one with motorized faders (namely the Icon Platform M).

MIDI controllers are great for all kinds of non-musical things like: - setting the volume / balance / solo / mute for speakers / multiple headsets and mixing multiple applications (eg. using pactl); - setting the zoom level / brightness for camera / webcam (eg. using v4l2-ctl) ; - setting the source / brightness for monitors (eg. using ddcutil)…

vustagc 3 minutes ago | parent [-]

I see I'm not the first to have this idea haha. I suppose you could use additional midi controllers as extra "function" keys, for things like volume control, brightness, etc.. Could be useful especially if using smaller keyboards without a numpad or a function row.

vunderba an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice job. Feels like there's a bit of misunderstanding of what this project is. It has nothing to do with audio - it's purely a means of mapping MIDI to shell commands.

There was (still is) a very popular program called BOME Midi Translator that did something similar - think of it like AutoHotKey but specifically for midi.

Back when I made heavy use of Kontakt libraries I got frustrated at the lack of an easy way to audition the patches (of which there could be hundreds on a single sampler). To get around it, I created a Bome script so when I pressed an unused button on my midi controller it would trigger a mouse click to advance to the next patch in my DAW and then send a note-on / note-off for C4 for half a second.

Made previewing the sounds much easier.

shrubble 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I thought you might have “composable” pipelines!

gchamonlive an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This reminds me of the Symphonic which is featured in the show Halt and Catch Fire

ctoth 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How about chords? Melodies which are paths? Passwords? Lots of great potential here!

lysp an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Password is 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata without "typos".

iainctduncan 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

nice... ;-)

Funny how we don't hear that movement much...

vunderba an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Goonies scene where they have to play a sequence correct to avoid triggering a trap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO7Ip0Xc10

sigseg1v 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is one of those projects that would be 10x better with a video demonstration!

smokel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ooh, let's spend next weekend doing this with my acoustic piano!

matthew_hre 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My Claude Code sessions are about to sound like the Breath of the Wild soundtrack

runamuck 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So I can run shell from a Miracle Piano connected to a NES running Linux?