This correspondence can be viewed the other way around. The following figure shows the piano keys on the keyboard layout.

More Octaves from the Keyboard
In such arrangement of correspondence between piano keys an keyboard keys, the keys of a regular computer keyboard would span about 3 octaves. Practically, this should suffice for most Arab-music pieces. However, in Mazzika, there are 60 piano keys spanning 5 octaves. In order to allow the computer keyboard to cover 5 octaves instead of 3, Mazzika provides a way to slide the correspondence between piano keys and keyboard keys. Using the keyboard scroll control, the user can slide the keyboard keys with respect to the piano keys. The sliding will be indicated visually by moving the characters under the piano keys.

As an alternative way to slide the keyboard:

• To slide the keyboard 1 step to the left, use the "0" key in the numeric key pad.
• To slide the keyboard 1 step to the right, use the "." key in the numeric key pad.

1/4 Tones
To shift a piano key by a 1/4 tone down or up while playing it:

• Press Ctrl while playing a key to shift the key by a 1/4 tone down.
• Press Alt while playing a key to shift the key by a 1/4 tone up.

Whenever a piano key is shifted from its normal tone (usually by a 1/4 tone up or down) the shift is shown visually in the 1/4-tone shift indicator. Of course, this is in addition to the fact that it sounds different.

The 1/4-tone shift indicator consists of 4 red and 4 blue LEDs. Each lit red LED indicates a 1/4-tone up and each blue LED indicate a 1/4-tone down. In most of the shift cases, only one LED is lit. It is only in remote cases, where specific maqams are selected, that more that one LED may be lit.

Key Shaping When a Maqam Is Selected
When a maqam is selected, only those piano keys corresponding to the maqam are highlighted. The off-maqam keys (those keys not belonging to the maqam) are dimmed. Further, if the selected maqam involves one or more 1/4 tones, the 1/4-tone shifts are shown on the shifted keys. A piano key is marked with ">" if it is shifted up by a 1/4 tone, and is marked with "<" if it is shifted down by a 1/4 tone.

Important Note: A piano key that is marked with "<" or ">" already has the 1/4-tone shift in it, without pressing Ctrl or Alt keys. Pressing Ctrl or Alt for such marked keys would add/subtract an extra shift.

The following figure shows how the piano keys look when the selected maqam is Bayaty on D (or "Re" in French). The piano key E flat (or "mi" bemol) has become E half-flat. The key is marked with ">", meaning that it is already shifted up by a 1/4 tone without pressing the Ctrl key. If the Ctrl key is pressed while playing this key, that would add another 1/4-note up-shift causing the sound to be natural E. In such a case the 1/4-note shift indicator will light 2 red LEDs instead of one.

Off-Maqam Keys: When a maqam is selected, those piano keys not belonging to the maqam are dimmed. These dimmed keys are still active. When they are played using the keyboard, they still produce their corresponding sounds. This is quite reasonable because a melody may have a few notes off the maqam. However, it is also conceivable that there can be situations where it is desired that the off-maqam keys be totally disabled. Mazzika provides the option of disabling the off-maqam keys using the maqam control menu.

Musical Instruments
The instruments drop-down list has 128 instruments for the user to select from. All played music will sound using the selected instrument.

• The user can control the sound volume using the volume slider.
• The user can shrink the main window of Mazzika , to show only the piano keys and the toolbar. This is particularly useful when the user is playing music while reading from sheet music in another window on the screen.
• The user can keep the Mazzika window always on top of all other windows, by checking the On top check box.
• If the user is interested in identifying the midi code for each piano key, these codes can be shown on the piano keys by selecting Show midi note-numbers from the main menu.