19-tone MIDI keyboard

Hi Graham, Andrew, Monz, Kraig, Carl & all:

Keep your fingers crossed -- this is my third attempt to post a reply in
two hours, Yahoo having "vanished" the first two attempts while I was
actually still writing them.

Thanks all, for the many and varied comments. I will try to address most
of them, please bear with me.

The 19-tone layout I'm looking for is one common to older pipe organs
and harpsichords: the 7-naturals/5-accidentals Halberstadt keyboard,
with split accidentals (subsemitones) and an extra accidental each
between E-F and B-C. The default tuning would probably be 12-edo with
accidentals tuned identically, and 19-edo as a second default. But I
really want to be able to play user-defined tunings, such as:

!

256/243 - 16/15

9/8

32/27 - 6/5

5/4

- 81/64

4/3

45/32 - 64/45

3/2

128/81 - 8/5

21/16

16/9 - 9/5

15/8

- 243/128

2/1

BTW Kraig, thanks for the pointers on layouts and for the clavichord
schematic. I liked your idea of two 19-tone layouts (38-key Bosanquet
style) for use with different timbres, for use with pipe organ
soundfonts. I'll be momentarily content to have a single 19-key
Halberstadt!

Monz, I found a link about the Yamaha keyboard, but it sent me to an IBM
patent site and I dead-ended there. And I agree with your frustrations:
I'm a strong proponent of the 19-tone keyboard for good and practical
reasons. It would make a large and varied subset of tunings available
for performance without having to punch in a new tuning on the fly. The
split-key configuration would feel quite familiar under the hands of
keyboard musicians everywhere. I don't think that such a MIDI keyboard
would be of interest only to musicologists and for historical music
performances (though that's nothing to sneeze at!). Many musicians
perform world-music in non-western tunings, and it would be nice to have
19 out of the 22 shrutis, or all 17 of the Persian scale, available at
one time!

Andrew, I'd love to collaborate on such a project with you. $ is indeed
a problem! Please contact me off-list so we can chat a bit about this.

I intended a longer reply, but I don't want to push my luck with Yahoo!
any further. Thanks to all who posted comments!

jls

PS: Nothing personal toward Kraig's reed organs, but I spent several
years with a little reed organ while trying to teach myself harmony and
counterpoint. Have you ever heard 12-edo chords on a reed organ??

I would love a 17-24 key to the octave midi keyboard. I think if the
split keys contained a mechanism that allowed them to either play
separately or be locked together, then the market could be greatly
expanded and it could be attractive to some non microtonalists. The
experience of a traditional twelve note mapping wouldn't have to be
compromised, but there would be extra, conveniently placed, keys
available for triggering loops, making different versions of the the
same patch available or for sending other midi messages. It could be
very useful for making impossible to play fingerings possible. I can
picture the nonmicrotonal market being much bigger than the microtonal
market for such a device. Perhaps, this would be the only way to make a
product like this commercially viable. Microtonalists might miss out on
some features that they would like, but at least it would be
available.