Keylight guide

Set up your keyboard, play songs, add your own, and keep your progress safe.

Getting started

Keylight is free and open source (MIT). There is no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. Your songs, your recordings and your progress stay on your device.

Which computers and phones

  • Mac: Apple silicon, macOS 13 or newer.
  • Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Beta
  • Android 8.0 or newer, installed from an APK file. Beta
  • iPhone and iPad: coming soon.

Which keyboards

  • LUMI Keys and ROLI Piano M, over USB, 24 keys. On Android you can also connect over Bluetooth.
  • A 49-key ROLI Piano works. Beta
  • You can join two 24-key keyboards into one 48-key row. Use two USB cables, or snap them together with one cable. Beta

Lights and buttons

  • On a Mac the keys light in full colour, and the keyboard's arrow and mode buttons work.
  • On Windows the keys light from the notes. These are not available on Windows yet: the brightness slider, the light show after a song, find-the-keys, the battery level, and the arrow and mode buttons.

On Windows, close ROLI Connect or any music software that is using the keyboard first.

First start

On the first start a short setup checks your sound, your keys and your lights. You can run it again from Settings.

No keyboard

You can still look around.

Playing a song

Open Search and pick a song. There are 76 built-in songs: 19 easy arrangements and 57 classical pieces.

Speed

Use the speed track at the top of the player: Wait, 0.5x, 0.75x, Full speed. In Wait the song stops until you play the right note.

Watch, hands and labels

  • Watch: the app plays the song for you first.
  • Hands: left, right or both.
  • Labels: off, note names or finger numbers.

Loop, click and count-in

  • Loop: mark a section and repeat it.
  • Click: a metronome.
  • Count-in: a count before the song starts.

Octave

Use the − and + buttons, or the Z and X keys, to go one octave down or up.

Views

Cascade, Rainbow, Colornote, Classic, and Sheet only. In Sheet only the sheet music fills the stage; it is available for songs that have a score.

Guided practice

Use the button below the keyboard. The song is split into phrases, hands separately first, in Wait mode first and then in faster steps. It brings back the bars you got wrong.

After a song

You get a result: accuracy, timing, stars and your longest streak.

Instruments

Pick a sound from the drop-down in the toolbar: grand piano, a sampled concert grand, electric pianos, organ, harpsichord, marimba, nylon guitar, flute, cello, strings, bass, lead and pads.

Expression

In Settings › Keyboard lights › Pitch bend & pressure: wiggle a key to bend the pitch, or press into a held key to swell sustained sounds.

Adding your own songs

Open Search › Add a song, or drop a file anywhere on the window.

Recordings

You can add MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG and AIFF files, up to 20 minutes long. Keylight listens to the recording and writes the notes, on your computer. The file is never uploaded. This works best with piano or solo recordings.

"Simplify to melody + bass" keeps the top line and a bass line, for an easier version.

The original recording plays along in sync, and keeps its pitch at 0.5x and 0.75x.

MIDI and MusicXML

MIDI files (.mid, .midi) and MusicXML files (.xml, .musicxml, .mxl) are read as written. Sheet music is shown for MusicXML songs only.

Title, cover and lyrics

The title, artist and cover come from the file. On Mac and Windows, "Find cover art and lyrics online" can look them up; it sends only the title, artist and length. To add lyrics, drop a .lrc file onto an open song.

Your songs

Your songs are marked YOURS in the library. To remove one, hover over its tile.

Correct notes

Correct notes is an editor to fix pitch, time, length, hand, finger and tempo, with Add, Remove and Undo. Editing a built-in song makes your own copy.

YouTube and Spotify links are not supported.

Course

  • 12 levels and 94 short lessons, from finding middle C. Each level ends with an exam.
  • Course order: Guided, which asks before you jump ahead, or Open, where you can go anywhere. Nothing is locked.
  • A placement test and "skip level" for people who already play.

Practice tab

  • Ear training, Rhythm, Sight-reading and Play it back: five difficulty levels each, and your best result is kept.
  • Scales & chords, Games, a Metronome, and the Playground, where you can play freely with any sound and a scale lit on the keys.
  • Practice counts toward your daily goal, from 5 to 30 minutes, and your streak.

Jam

  • Four tracks (drums, bass, chords, lead), with four loop slots each. Record a loop; it starts and ends on the bar.
  • A drum step grid, tempo, swing, a metronome, delay and reverb, scale lock, and snap to scale.
  • Export the session as a MIDI file.

Recording your playing

Open Settings › Sound › Record my takes. Keylight records the falling notes, the keyboard and the app's sound as a video.

  • Mac: your takes are saved in Movies › Keylight.
  • Windows: your takes are saved in Videos › Keylight.
  • A take stops by itself after 15 minutes.

Camera coach Experimental

Open Settings › Hand tracking › Start camera, then Find the keys (Mac) or Click the end keys.

  • Numbered finger badges are shown over the keys: 1 for the thumb to 5 for the little finger, blue for the left hand and orange for the right.
  • Advisory finger coaching compares your fingering with the suggested one. It never changes your score.
  • It runs on your computer; no video leaves it. The camera is only asked for when you press Start camera.
  • It needs the whole keyboard in view. A phone on a stand above the keys works best; a laptop camera works poorly.

It cannot tell hovering from pressing, and accuracy drops at steep angles.

Airwave Experimental

Keylight can use the Airwave's hand-gesture MIDI (raise, tilt, grasp) to shape the sound: Settings › External instruments & gestures.

Finger tracking from the Airwave is being tested with volunteers and is not confirmed to work.

Support my device

Open Settings › Support my device. This is for keyboards that are missing, unlit or only half working.

There are five steps: Detect, Test, About you, Review, Send. It builds a plain-text report: your MIDI ports, how the keyboard identifies itself, a 10-second key test (statistics only), and an optional lights check.

Nothing is sent automatically. You copy it, you save it, or you open a pre-filled GitHub issue.

Never included: serial numbers, file paths, user names, song titles, recordings, progress, or the notes you played.

Backups

Open Settings › Progress to save your library, your settings and your progress to one .keylightbackup file, and to restore it later or on another computer.

Keylight also keeps the last three daily automatic backups.

Supporting the project

Keylight is free. If you like it, you can leave a tip at ko-fi.com/scizers. No features are locked.

It is an unofficial community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by ROLI.