The piano keys section enables the user to play music using the computer keyboard, with proper animation of the piano keys. The characters that appear below the piano keys indicate the current correspondence between the piano keys and the computer keyboard keys. For details about how to play music, refer to the section " Playing Music Using the Keyboard".

The main toolbar provides various controls and indicators. The subsection "Main Toolbar" explains the use of these controls and indicators.

The Maqam-Control frame provides means for controlling different aspects related to the use of maqams in Mazzika. For more information about using the maqam-control frame, refer to the section "Maqam Control".

The Record/Replay frame provides the necessary interface that allows the user to record, replay, and save the music he/she plays. Refer to the section "Recording the Played Music" for more information about this frame.

The Midi-File Replay frame provides means for importing, filtering, and replaying a MIDI file. Refer to the section "Midi-File Replay" for information about the features of MIDI file replay in Mazzika, and about how to use these features.

Main Toolbar

Shrink/Expand Button
This is a toggle button for shrinking and expanding the main window of Mazzika. When shrunk, the main window shows only the piano keys and the main toolbar. This is particularly useful when the user is playing music while reading the scores from a sheet music in another program.

Help Button
This brings up Mazzika help.

Menu Button
This shows the main pop-up menu of Mazzika. In mazzika, all menus are pop-up ones. This is intended to minimize the screen area used in the compact (shrunk) view, and to associate menus with their related user interface sections.

On/Off Switch
This is a toggle button for turning the MIDI output device on and off. When it is off, no sound is produced. For learnability purposes, the switch is designed to be automatically turned on when the user starts playing music. It is, however, useful to be able to switch the MIDI output device off because some other programs that use the same device may require exclusive access to the device.

On-Top Check Box
Checking this box causes Mazzika window to always be on top off all other windows, even when one of these other windows is active.

Keyboard Scroll
This allows the user to change the correspondence between the piano keys and the keyboard keys, in order to cover more octaves. See the section "More Octaves from the Keyboard" for more details.

Volume
This allows the user to control the volume of the played/replayed music.

1/4-Tone Shift Indicator
Mazzika provides means for playing 1/4 tones (see the section "1/4 tones" for details). Because the piano keys are 12 per octave, 1/4 tones are produced by shifting a key by a 1/4 tone. Users with advanced ear training would audibly identify the shift. Users without such training would need some visual clue when the note of a piano key is shifted by a 1/4 note. The 1/4-tone shift indicator serves exactly this purpose.

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.

Instrument Selector
This is a drop-down list of 128 instruments for the user to select from. All played music will sound using the selected instrument.

Using Mazzika
Refer to the section "Using Mazzika" for detailed information.