I am a beginning pianist (playing for 2 years), accustomed to practicing on very high-end acoustic pianos (Steinway, Yamaha and Fazioli concert grands), which I have access to, but obviously do not own.
I just bought a Casio PX-750, which is an entry-level digital piano, and have some basic questions regarding USB-MIDI performance and software using a Macbook Pro and iPad.
I use the iPad app Tonara, which syncs my playing to sheet music as I play. However, Tonara works on audio input from the iPad's microphone. I usually use headphones with my digital piano. Is there an app or Mac application similar to Tonara, which can use MIDI input? Intuitively, MIDI input should be much easier for an app to sync to score than audio (which is noisy). It should also make detecting wrong notes/wrong rhythms feasible (where wrong is defined as anything contrary to the score). (Please note that Tonara syncs my playing to downloaded sheet music - it is not a transcription app which transcribes what I play. I am not looking for a transcription app.)
Connecting my keyboard to my Macbook Pro and using, for example, GarageBand or Kontakt, I can use sampled pianos to get a much more sophisticated sound than the Casio has in-built. However, there seems to be a change in the mechanics in the piano action, described as follows. Let us say I place a finger on a piano key, and depress it very slowly. So slowly, that it takes 10 seconds to depress the key completely. On an acoustic piano, this would make no sound at all, since the hammer would strike the strings far too softly to make an audible sound. Using the Casio directly, this also makes no sound, which is great (realistic). However, when I use the Casio connected to Garageband/Kontakt through USB-MIDI, as the key nears full-depression, the note sounds very softly (perhaps the softest it can sound), which is unrealistic, since we have a note sounding without the key ever 'striking' the 'hammer'. Is this behaviour normal, or can the software be tweaked to adjust for this?