Where to Start: Building a Piano App
Code your own MIDI piano — play notes, craft sequences, master timing, and bring Für Elise to life.
Summary
You don't need to read music to build an instrument. This guide starts from a single note and works up to sequencing, timing and playback with Java MIDI — until the program can play Für Elise on its own. A friendly on-ramp into how digital instruments actually work.
No music skills required. Starting from one note, this article builds toward a working MIDI piano that can play, sequence and time a full melody — a gentle but complete tour of how instruments are coded.
Key ideas
- 01 MIDI represents music as events — note on, note off, velocity — not as audio samples.
- 02 Timing is the hard part: sequencing notes means thinking in ticks and tempo.
- 03 A small synthesis layer turns events into sound you can actually hear.
- 04 By the end, the program plays a real piece — Für Elise — entirely from code.
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