Piano Guide

A large collection of sheets and a guide for the Piano.

Introduction to TU/Virtual Piano

The playable piano was first introduced by macdguy as an addon in Garry's Mod, but before that, virtualpiano.net existed.

The concept is simple - each key on a standard computer keyboard corresponds to a key on the piano.
Typing in lowercase will play the white keys, and uppercase will play black keys.

With the addition of the sustain option in a recent update, I recommend having it toggled if you are using a computer keyboard. Pressing the spacebar to use sustain whilst playing difficult songs is a bit wonky. If you have an actual pedal - by all means feel free to use it.

In my opinion, the faster your WPM, the more difficult songs you can play. The more difficult songs will require a bit of muscle memory as well as good finger placement. Of course, unless you are truly dedicated, there is no need to memorize the sheet if you have two monitors or play split-screen.

Basics

This is the basic formatting of the sheets - anything without brackets or curly brackets are played by simply pressing that key on your keyboard.
Dashes or hyphens indicate a pause.

For some sheets that I will be providing below, they will have color coding for the timing. Each color represents how long the note will be held before moving onto the next one.


Green means hold the note for a while before playing the next note.

Orange means play the note relatively quickly and move on.

Red means play the note very quickly and move on.

Sheets

Here are a list of websites that I find myself often using for sheets. They were originally meant for a different game, but as they all use the same QWERTY VP format, they work fine. Thanks to all the sheet creators, your work is much appreciated.

Keep in mind, some of these are quite difficult for the beginner. But, they will have difficulties labeled, so play according to that. Transposition has been added to the game as of the most recent update, so if a sheet has -# or +#, adjust accordingly.

MASTER INDEX[vp-sheets.fly.dev]

Qubek's VP Sheets[trello.com]
Tenebris VP Sheets[trello.com]
Sllew's VP Sheets[trello.com]
Zwar57 Sheets[trello.com]
Furnik's Piano[trello.com]
Archaeic's VP Sheets[trello.com]
Brumble's VP Sheets[trello.com]
EyoqorH VP Trello[trello.com]
Virtual Piano Sheets[trello.com]
QWERKY QWERTY VP Sheets[trello.com]
VP Sheets[trello.com]
QWERTY Contemporary[trello.com]
Phoenix's Virtual Piano Trello[trello.com]
Waterkasai's Virtual Piano Sheets[trello.com]
Virtual Piano Sheets[trello.com]
VP Sheets QWERTY (Created by me.)[trello.com]


Updated 9/20/2024

FAQ

Q: Some of these sheets have notes such as [0eTO], where there are uppercase and lowercase letters. How do I play these?

Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to play both a black key and a white key using a QWERTY keyboard. The only way to make it seem like you are is by playing the lowercase and then following up with the shift uppercase keys as fast as possible.

Q: Why would I want to play it manually when I can use scripts or a macro?

While the scripts and macros are certainly useful and are permitted, there are slight differences between someone actually playing and a program doing it. I find that a program cannot manage tempo well, and of course, it doesn't sound humanized. But it's up to you whether you want to use one or not, just be honest about it.

Q: How can I get better at this?

A difficult question. As I mentioned in the introduction, how well and fast you can type matters quite a bit. I myself type around 150 WPM - and yet I still find myself struggling with some of the difficult songs. I'm sure extremely fast typists such as turret would be able to breeze through a sheet.
Memorize your keyboard layout.

But if you practice typing and playing, it will definitely help.

Q: How can I play sheets without memorizing?

If you have a double or triple monitor setup, you can place the sheets on one of them and look at them while playing. Otherwise, you could set Tower Unite to Windowed and drag it to one side of your monitor, while the sheets are on the other side (splitscreen).

MIDI

MIDI support has been added to Tower Unite as of 12/15/2023!
Please refer to this guide if you want to playback MIDI files directly.

Extras

NEW WEBSITE TO CONVERT MIDI
https://vpsheets.com/
Thanks to Kite!

For those of you who have MIDIs and want to convert them into a VP sheet, heres a link to a Google Drive Folder that contains the converter. Just download the entire folder, and run the .bat and JAR file.
There are no viruses. Feel free to confirm it however you want.
The converter was made by Little Cute Lion from GMTower if anyone remembers him!

Google Drive Link (unzip and extract)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nXPpsoOCqTXBCvAdyBIE-BvwcC0ZgwWC/view?usp=sharing

Dropbox Link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqgm3nlrqkh8042/MIDI%20to%20QWERTY%20Converter.zip?dl=0

PLAYING OUTSIDE OF TOWER UNITE
I recommend using the website PianoRhythm[www.pianorhythm.me], and changing the input layout in settings to "VIRTUAL_PIANO".
There is also a free software program called FreePiano[freepiano.tiwb.com], where you can use instrument VSTs to play using the Virtual Piano keymap which can be downloaded here.[www.dropbox.com]

Otherwise, you can also refer to this Reddit thread that contains 4 portable versions of the piano for you to play, each with a different soundfont.

Conclusion

Playing the TU Piano is not as intimidating as you think, and I hope this guide will convince you to try it out one day. I really enjoy playing myself, and some of you have possibly seen me in your condo or in the plaza playing it. I'm sure there are also other great guides out there - I just decided to create one myself out of boredom. Please leave a rating if you read the guide!

If you have any further questions feel free to comment down below!

[nxyu]

no problem!! thank u for listening

[🌈潘仔Bounce]

thanks for visiting my condo!!!! and thanks for your guide

[nxyu]

no problem! love ur sheets man

[ben]

thanks for adding my trello :)

[eriolu]

I see, thank you very much ^^

[nxyu]

Sheckla, I would try updating Windows. I had this problem before and that fixed it for me.

[eriolu]

Is the Java MIDIPianoSheetCreator not starting for anyone else? It was the best one from all the sheet creators but can't get it to start anymore

[nxyu]

Thank you!

[Ghostie]

Really good guide!