Tastiera (Italian for ‘keyboard’) is a Dashboard widget that transforms your computer keyboard into two independent 1½-octave piano keyboards, each of which has a flexible range and can be assigned to any of the 128 instruments defined in General MIDI.
As can be seen above, the widget itself will clearly show which key corresponds to each note, and this holds true for any keyboard layout.
Instrument and note/octave names are available in italiano, en français, auf deutsch and in English.
Tastiera is shareware; you can download it free of charge and try it out for a period of up to 30 days.
The unregistered version has a limited choice of instruments and ranges, but is otherwise identical to the full version.
Click on this button to pay in euros, currently €5.77.
Click on this button to pay in US dollars, currently $8.31.
Click on this button to pay in pounds sterling, currently £5.12.
The licence is sent out automatically, typically within a minute of a successful payment. Please make sure you provide a working e-mail address.
We use PayPal to process payments, but this does not mean that you need to sign up for a PayPal account; simply click on the appropriate Buy button and follow the link above the credit-card logos. Additional payment methods may become available once you select your country.
Please contact us for other payment types. We do not particularly encourage this for individual licences, though, as the process is likely to be slow (a few days at the very least) and expensive, particularly for people outside Europe.
Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) is required. (The software has not been tested with and may not work with versions prior to Mac OS X 10.5.2 and Safari 3.1.1.) PowerPC or Intel processor.
So far, functions perfectly. It not only simulates (or assigns) pitches to the keyboard, it will also sustain a pitch if the given key is held down. In addition, I find the interface to be very attractive. [...] as a professional singer, I suspect this little widget [...] is going to prove invaluable.Private communication:
I love this widget! [...] I’ve been searching desperately for months, and there’s absolutely nothing even close to this. This widget is straight-forward and extremely simple to use.ZeroZen:
La inspiración musical puede llegar en cualquier momento, incluso cuando [está] sentado trabajando frente a [su] Mac. Tastiera es justo lo que [necesita], ya que es un pequeño widget que transforma [su] teclado en un piano (y suena como tal).
MacGeek19 via MacUpdate:
This is soo cool.BeszéljükMac:
Tastiera (olaszul billentyűzet) a neve annak a Dashboard widget-nek, amely zongorává változtatja a billentyűzetünket. A többi hasonló widget-től eltérően ebben az alkalmazásban 3 oktávot használhatunk [...] és a widgetben egyértelműen fel lett tüntetve, hogy az egyes gombokhoz mely hangok tartoznak.
Private communication:
I wanted to write to compliment you on the beautiful Tastiera widget. It is a nicely designed piece of software, simple to use and lovely to behold.
The widget will cause the input menu (with a flag icon) to be shown in the menu bar if the standard US keyboard layout is disabled. To hide it again, please go to System Preferences > International, enable the keyboard layout called U.S. and uncheck the option Show input menu in menu bar.
Occasionally, the widget may end up using the wrong keyboard layout, in which case the widget will not work as expected. This can normally be amended by hiding Dashboard and showing it again (e.g., by pressing F12 twice). In addition, enabling the US keyboard layout (as described above) will make this issue less likely to manifest itself.
One or two key positions are probably wrong for American (ANSI) and Japanese (JIS) keyboards. (This has to do with the physical keyboard layout and number of keys.) Please get in touch if you are using one of these keyboard types and want this issue to be fixed.