Making an inexpensive Microtonal keyboard from available comercial keyboard(s)

Hi Microtonalists,

I'm a newbie here, so I hope my idea is useful and new. I'm trying hard to develop a new keyboard called a jammer, simular to the Thummer (RIP) that you may have heard about. I created mine by adapting a couple of commercial AXiS-49's from C-Thru Music ($500) and reprogramming the key layout using Max/MSP. A jammer can easily be made JI or other interesting intonation because of its 2-dimensionality, but I'm thinking to go beyond that.

It has just occurred to me that it would be fairly simple to convert the key arrangement to a highly-microtonal arrangement by taking advantage of the hexagonal array the jammer uses. In a jammer (or axis) most keys have 6 neighbours, in a 2-dimensional array, rather than the pair of neighbours, linear layout that a normal keyboard has.

With Max/MSP or Pure Data, or one of the other midi programming languages, that it would be dead simple to make some pairings of Axis/jammer keys produce, instead of the normal, boring "Note A + Note B" combination, instead produce a hybrid note with unusual features. I think I could get up to 4 precise hybrid notes per key, with the complication that you'd lose the Note A + Note B intervals.

While the sky is the limit as far as what the term "hybrid note" can mean, what pops immediately to mind is microtonality. There are very many people investigating and working with microtonality, but I gather one limit, up to now, has been the availability of keyboards, the few keyboards available are very expensive and often unwieldy.

Aside: the other limit has been a theory of microtonality: I will someday post simple instructions on how to make a microtonality slide-rule style chord calculator (it's fun to see the chords missing from 12-tet), but I digress.

With the Axis keyboards, most of the keys have 3 neighbor connections that are available for making hybrid notes, unlike on a regular keyboard that only has one. This gives dazzling possibilities - an Axis-49 with 98 keys could be made to play nearly 250+ micro-tonal notes. These would be available in real-time, without large hand movements, just small finger movements.

Of course, no gain comes without cost: this robs the keyboard of the ability to play adjacent-note intervals, so a player might need 2 keyboards to make some chords.

I have no time to pursue this particular ball (learning complexities of the regular scale is my current challenge), but if you in the microtonality world would be interested, please let me know and I'll write up my idea in clearer depth.

Ken Rushton :ugeek:
site: MusicScienceGuy.vox.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I wonder if one can program the midi stream to use this idea with a
traditional keyboard.

Does anyone know?

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Ken Rushton <bogrushton@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi Microtonalists,
>
> I'm a newbie here, so I hope my idea is useful and new. I'm trying hard to
> develop a new keyboard called a jammer, simular to the Thummer (RIP) that
> you may have heard about. I created mine by adapting a couple of commercial
> AXiS-49's from C-Thru Music ($500) and reprogramming the key layout using
> Max/MSP. A jammer can easily be made JI or other interesting intonation
> because of its 2-dimensionality, but I'm thinking to go beyond that.
>
> It has just occurred to me that it would be fairly simple to convert the
> key arrangement to a highly-microtonal arrangement by taking advantage of
> the hexagonal array the jammer uses. In a jammer (or axis) most keys have 6
> neighbours, in a 2-dimensional array, rather than the pair of neighbours,
> linear layout that a normal keyboard has.
>
> With Max/MSP or Pure Data, or one of the other midi programming languages,
> that it would be dead simple to make some pairings of Axis/jammer keys
> produce, instead of the normal, boring "Note A + Note B" combination,
> instead produce a hybrid note with unusual features. I think I could get up
> to 4 precise hybrid notes per key, with the complication that you'd lose the
> Note A + Note B intervals.
>
> While the sky is the limit as far as what the term "hybrid note" can mean,
> what pops immediately to mind is microtonality. There are very many people
> investigating and working with microtonality, but I gather one limit, up to
> now, has been the availability of keyboards, the few keyboards available are
> very expensive and often unwieldy.
>
> Aside: the other limit has been a theory of microtonality: I will someday
> post simple instructions on how to make a microtonality slide-rule style
> chord calculator (it's fun to see the chords missing from 12-tet), but I
> digress.
>
> With the Axis keyboards, most of the keys have 3 neighbor connections that
> are available for making hybrid notes, unlike on a regular keyboard that
> only has one. This gives dazzling possibilities - an Axis-49 with 98 keys
> could be made to play nearly 250+ micro-tonal notes. These would be
> available in real-time, without large hand movements, just small finger
> movements.
>
> Of course, no gain comes without cost: this robs the keyboard of the
> ability to play adjacent-note intervals, so a player might need 2 keyboards
> to make some chords.
>
> I have no time to pursue this particular ball (learning complexities of the
> regular scale is my current challenge), but if you in the microtonality
> world would be interested, please let me know and I'll write up my idea in
> clearer depth.
>
> Ken Rushton :ugeek:
> site: MusicScienceGuy.vox.com
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]