A few years ago i has a lot of fun with old toy pianos by using Synhtesia as a guide to play the song.

Instead of connecting these directly via MIDI, which is lacking in most of them, i’ve used a big 10in tablet positioned exactly to match the corresponding keys on the piano.

This way i can actually “see” the falling notes from the tablet and play them directly Guitar Hero-style. No need to memorize the score, just pick a song and start playing!

You can see an example of this trick in action here.

I’ve found this is much better than light up keys, since you can easily visualize the exact timing and the duration of each note.

TIP: when you import a MIDI file in Synhtesia you have to pick the tracks that you will be performing. You usually want to pick the lead track. This may require a bit of trial and error, since usually it is not clearly labeled in the MIDI file (usually it is a wind instrument btw).

Since i had so much fun with this trick i’ve started collecting toy pianos with different synthesizers inside.

The models i currently own are:

• Casio PT-82: squarewave synth, fewer voices but very good build quality and keys feedback.
• Yamaha PSS-50: FM synth, nicely MIDI-esque voices, keys are bigger and much more sensitive than the Casio PT-82, but still usable and with a good feedback.
• Yamaha SHS-10: guitar style. FM synth with less voices than the PSS-50. But in contrast has vibrato, portamento & sustain variations, MIDI out, and octave transposing/shifting (very useful!). Keys are a few mm smaller than the PSS-50.

Models i’ve owned in the past:

• Yamaha PSS-80: squarewave synth with voice variations and medium-sized keys like the PSS-50. I like the squarewave voices of the Casio PT- serie more than this.
• Casio VL-1: bought out of curiosity, turned out to be quite uncomfortable to use due to the very small calculator-like keys. The voices are very similar to the PT-82.
• Mad Catz Rock Band 3 wireless keyboad for Wii: no builtin synth, but has MIDI connectivity. The keys were too big for this trick.
• Casio SA-1: wavetable synth with lot of voices, but most of them have an annoying reverb effect. Keys have the same size of the PT-82 but a more shallow feedback. Very lightweight and easy to carry around.

TIP: A good site where you can find complete reviews of these old pianos is this.

For this trick you want to pick a keyboard with small mini keys, so you can easily cover more of them with the tablet.

Another option is to get one of these mini MIDI keyboards and connect them directly to the tablet via USB OTG (you will be using the Synthesia builtin synth in this case).