Awarded the Frances Clark Award for Keyboard Pedagogy by the Music Teachers National Association, Home Concert Xtreme (HCX) makes MIDI files responsive to your playing. The program follows your timing, tempo, and volume, giving you an accompanist, rehearsal tool, or a music tutor on demand.

Load your musical score (in the form of a Standard MIDI File), connect your MIDI instrument, and start to play. HCX will match your playing to the score, play the accompaniment tracks in a musically coordinated fashion, and even turn your pages automatically.

HCX is compatible with thousands of commercial and free MIDI files as well as properly formatted MIDI files that you make yourself. In particular, it is compatible with the MIDI files that are available for most popular piano teaching methods as well as dozens of piano concerto MIDI files and more. 

When you load a Standard MIDI File into HCX, the program lets you view any one or two tracks in notation (such as piano left- and right-hands). If you connect a compatible MIDI keyboard to your iPad, it will expect you to play the music on screen while playing all of the other tracks.

As you play, HCX will determine your location, tempo, and dynamic expression, musically coordinate the accompaniment tracks to match your playing, and turn your pages intelligently. In other words, you are the soloist and Home Concert Xtreme is the conservatory-trained conductor, orchestra, and page-turner.

HCX has three playback modes:

• LEARN: waits for you to play the correct note.
• JAM: plays the accompaniment tracks normally and you have to keep up.
• PERFORM: follows your tempo and will even jump to another part of the piece if you jump.

In all three modes, HCX tracks your dynamics and adjusts the loudness of the accompaniment tracks.

OTHER FEATURES

• track mixer
• single button for muting all accompaniment tracks
• on-screen keyboard display that shows the correct note in Learn mode
• practice loop
• metronome
• manual tempo adjustment
• single-hand practice option
• playback of recorded performance
• user-created score enhancements (dynamics, fingering, clef changes, etc.)
• optional markers for further controlling playback (wait-for-attack, wait-for-special-signal, restore-tempo, ignore-soloist)

FREEBIES

HCX comes loaded with sample MIDI files from a variety of publishers in order to get you started.

SUPPORTED FILE TYPES

HCX works with thousands of Standard MIDI Files. The best quality files usually come from commercial publishers. You can also make your own SMFs using a sequencer, notation, or auto-arranger program. Visit www.zenph.com/zenph-software/home-concert-xtreme/midi-files to find quality sources of MIDI files for performance, practice, and instruction. Use iTunes, DiskAid (www.digidna.net), or email attachment to copy MIDI files to your iPad.

REQUIREMENTS

• Apple iPad or iPad 2 running iOS version 4.2 or later
• properly formatted Type 0 or Type 1 Standard MIDI Files, meaning:
• organized to logical beats and barlines
• correct key signature(s) and time signature(s)
• left- and right-hand keyboard parts assigned to separate MIDI channels (Type 0 SMF) or assigned to separate tracks (Type 1 SMF)
• compatible MIDI interface for iPad, such as iConnectMIDI or Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit used with a class-compliant USB MIDI interface or keyboard