Rainer -- YES -- that was precisely the problem. Thank you very much.

On my system, the two single quotes (apostrophes) adjacent to one another appear as a double quote (quotation mark) in the word processor (including Notepad). In fact, if I copied the strings produced by Melodyhound's keyboard, into my word processor, and then put them right back via copy and paste, the web page would fail. Apparently, the word processor would not only display them as a quotation mark, it would actually store the quotation mark in place of the two apostrophes!

That latter point had escaped me. Now I see. If it were possible to somehow alert people about this issue -- or -- perhaps simply have the program detect the quotation mark and treat it as two apostrophes -- there would likely be fewer mixups like mine.

Thank you so very much for this really helpful on-line service, and for your quick and accurate answer!

Hmm - sounds like I should make it a bit more robust. But until I have done that:

could it be that you entered " instead of '' (a quotation mark instead of the required two apostrophes)?

Cheers,

Rainer

Dear Rainer,

I just found your site yesterday and joined it today.

The keyboard entry systems are really great, but I encounter a problem with both the Melodyhound and the one on Musipedia. I have installed the latest Java just yesterday.

I can play the desired tune by pointing and clicking with my mouse on the piano keys. However, if I create a string, e.g. : c"4 dis"4 c"4 ais'4 gis'4 f'4 ais'4 ais'4 f'4 c"4 ais'4 gis'4 g'4 --- using LilyPond notation and MS Notepad, and then Paste that text into the slot for Melodyhound (or Muispedia), I get an "Error on Page" message that returns this error info:

Line 1
Char 59
Error: Unterminated string constant
Code: 0
URL: http://www.musipedia.org


The piano just will not play a typed-in string, it will only play a string of characters that I create by actually using the Mouse to select each one. That selection method is a bit cumbersome to get exactly right the first time (usually because of the length of notes you select may not be right the first time) but if you can manually edit the string you create, then in one or two edits you have exactly what you want. (Similarly, inserting rests is tough to get exactly right the first time.)

Do you have any suggestions or experience with this problem? I'm running MS Windows XP and IE 6, with latest Java. I have Norton AntiVirus 6 running.

Thanks for any thoughts you or others might have!

RC

Thanks!

I noticed that the keyboard (and all other sound-emitting programs such as Timidity) go silent on Linux after the Query by Humming applet has been used in Firefox. They regain their voice only when Firefox is stopped and restarted (it does not matter that the applet is not running anymore). Java, however, remains able to use sound all the time within that same Firefox instance. This looks to me like the JVM is reserving the ALSA sound system even though the applet says "close" to the MIDI sequencer. Does anybody know what else the applet could do to make the Java virtual machine release all sound resources and give other programs a chance to use them? Or what could be a workaround for Linux users? How can one see which program is exclusively using the sound system?

Well, it works ok on my PC. I'll try it on my Mac when I get home.

Hello,

I would be grateful for feedback about a new keyboard: please check out http://www.melodyhound.com/; on the main page, there is a keyboard that looks an awful lot like that from the Musipedia main page, but it has sound.

I intend to get rid of the buggy Java-based keyboard with sound because it takes a long time to start up, it has a bug that makes some computers silent, and it does not work at all without Java.

The new keyboard uses Flash in a seemingly highly portable way for creating sound when the mouse pointer hovers over the lower ends of keys, or if a note is entered. If no Flash plugin is installed, the keyboard still works (but silently), and the "Play" button still gives you something to listen to even without Flash.

I tested it with Firefox under Linux and Windows, with a Flash-less Konqueror, and with an old IE under Windows 2000 (I guess "old IE" is a pleonasm). Especially if you have access to other platforms and browsers, but not only then, I would be grateful for feedback.

Rainer