6 ms·

Show HN: Pianoterm – Run shell commands from your Piano. A Linux CLI tool

61 points by vustagc 7mo ago

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

shablulman 7mo ago
[flagged]
smokel 7mo ago
Ooh, let's spend next weekend doing this with my acoustic piano!
runamuck 7mo ago
So I can run shell from a Miracle Piano connected to a NES running Linux?
sigseg1v 7mo ago
This is one of those projects that would be 10x better with a video demonstration!
ctoth 7mo ago
How about chords? Melodies which are paths? Passwords? Lots of great potential here!
- vunderba 7mo ago
  Goonies scene where they have to play a sequence correct to avoid triggering a trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO7Ip0Xc10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO7Ip0Xc10
- lysp 7mo ago
  Password is 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata without "typos".
  - iainctduncan 7mo ago
    nice... ;-) Funny how we don't hear that movement much...
matthew_hre 7mo ago
My Claude Code sessions are about to sound like the Breath of the Wild soundtrack
vunderba 7mo ago
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.
- snthpy 7mo ago
  Thanks. So you essentially get an 88 key macro board in your lounge?
  - vunderba 7mo ago
    Exactly. Instead of buying something like an Elgato Deck, you can repurpose (or buy really cheap) midi keyboards/controllers and map them through a Midi->Script translators and achieve the same result.
CagedJean 7mo ago
[dead]
gchamonlive 7mo ago
This reminds me of the Symphonic which is featured in the show Halt and Catch Fire
Arkanosis 7mo ago
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 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 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
  Same. In the past I've mapped cheap midi controllers with endless encoders over to act as a "scrubbers" when doing video editing.
shrubble 7mo ago
I thought you might have “composable” pipelines!
pimlottc 7mo ago
Some other existing utilities for triggering commands with MIDI signals: - https://gitlab.com/enetheru/midi2input https://gitlab.com/enetheru/midi2input - https://midimonster.net/ https://midimonster.net/
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
alana314 7mo ago
This would pair well with Midicard, the tiny credit-card-sized MIDI keyboard I make: https://midicard.com https://midicard.com
recognity 7mo ago
Love this. Using a piano as a macro board is the kind of creative dev tooling I wish I saw more of. Have you considered letting users define their own key mappings in a YAML config? That way people could customize it for their specific DAW workflow without touching the code.
- vustagc 7mo ago
  You can define the mappings in a plain text (key = command) config file. No need to touch the code.
yarivk 7mo ago
[flagged]
_flux 7mo ago
I did a similar thing a while back: https://github.com/eras/midihidi https://github.com/eras/midihidi While that one might not be of much use, yours might be :). Actually I just have a small midikbd next to my computer, so maybe I could find use for this. I did think of one potential use for midihidi: using MIDI as input device when running a tracked in an Amiga emulator.

61 points by vustagc 7mo ago

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

shablulman 7mo ago

[flagged]

smokel 7mo ago

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

runamuck 7mo ago

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

sigseg1v 7mo ago

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

ctoth 7mo ago

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

vunderba 7mo ago
Goonies scene where they have to play a sequence correct to avoid triggering a trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO7Ip0Xc10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUO7Ip0Xc10
lysp 7mo ago
Password is 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata without "typos".
- iainctduncan 7mo ago
  nice... ;-) Funny how we don't hear that movement much...

matthew_hre 7mo ago

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

vunderba 7mo ago

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.

snthpy 7mo ago
Thanks. So you essentially get an 88 key macro board in your lounge?
- vunderba 7mo ago
  Exactly. Instead of buying something like an Elgato Deck, you can repurpose (or buy really cheap) midi keyboards/controllers and map them through a Midi->Script translators and achieve the same result.

CagedJean 7mo ago

[dead]

gchamonlive 7mo ago

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

Arkanosis 7mo ago

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 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 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
Same. In the past I've mapped cheap midi controllers with endless encoders over to act as a "scrubbers" when doing video editing.

shrubble 7mo ago

I thought you might have “composable” pipelines!

pimlottc 7mo ago

Some other existing utilities for triggering commands with MIDI signals: - https://gitlab.com/enetheru/midi2input https://gitlab.com/enetheru/midi2input - https://midimonster.net/ https://midimonster.net/

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

alana314 7mo ago

This would pair well with Midicard, the tiny credit-card-sized MIDI keyboard I make: https://midicard.com https://midicard.com

recognity 7mo ago

Love this. Using a piano as a macro board is the kind of creative dev tooling I wish I saw more of. Have you considered letting users define their own key mappings in a YAML config? That way people could customize it for their specific DAW workflow without touching the code.

vustagc 7mo ago
You can define the mappings in a plain text (key = command) config file. No need to touch the code.

yarivk 7mo ago

[flagged]

_flux 7mo ago

I did a similar thing a while back: https://github.com/eras/midihidi https://github.com/eras/midihidi While that one might not be of much use, yours might be :). Actually I just have a small midikbd next to my computer, so maybe I could find use for this. I did think of one potential use for midihidi: using MIDI as input device when running a tracked in an Amiga emulator.