by Josh Lowensohn
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The YouTube Piano uses YouTube's timed annotations to play notes from
the video's timeline.
(Credit: CNET)
This is nowhere near as cool as that Nintendo Wario game ad/video
hybrid, or the Honda headlight ad/video that surfaced on Vimeo last
year. But it is more useful than both of them combined.
Meet the YouTube piano, a video of piano notes that has on-screen
annotations that skip to that particular part of the video and thus
the corresponding note. In practice, you could play a song, as some
YouTube commenters have done with deep-linked comments. But to be
honest, it can't (and won't) sound close to the real thing.
Still, this is about the only useful--and non-annoying use of
on-screen YouTube annotations I've seen in a long time. Kudos to its
creators, Adam Ben Ezra, Guy Dayan, and Daniel Barak, who run an
entire channel of other, similar-functioning instruments. These
include a pipe organ, electric guitar, and shaker.
I'm still holding out for a banjo version, so I can strum a little Deliverance.