TouchKeys

Hi all,

I'm a composer and instrument designer in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London. I thought you might be interested in a new keyboard instrument I've developed, which I launched last week on Kickstarter. The project is called TouchKeys, and it adds XY touch sensing to the surface of every key, so the pitch and timbre of the notes can be controlled just by moving the fingers around on the key surfaces. Here's the link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/instrumentslab/touchkeys-multi-touch-musical-keyboard

And here's a video showing how vibrato and pitch bends can be done independently on each note:

http://youtu.be/6fhmIqKHGs8

Given the interest in controllers and keyboard layouts here, I thought you all might like this, and microtonal music is one of the applications I had in mind. To start with, bending the pitch of each note separately lets you achieve some pretty interesting pitch combinations; another option is that you can sound a different note depending on where you strike the key, so for instance quarter tones or a 43-tone Partch scale can be mapped onto just 12 keys.

The Kickstarter campaign aims to gather support for a manufacturing run of the TouchKeys sensors (which go on any keyboard). It's a personal/university project, not a commercial one, and there's no profit involved here: my goal is to make interesting new music!

Please drop me a line if you have any comments, questions or ideas. And if you're in the London area I'd be happy to show you the instrument in person.

Best wishes,
Andrew

------
Andrew McPherson
Lecturer in Digital Media
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewm
http://andrewmcpherson.org
andrewm@...

Cool idea! I poked around a bit and liked the idea of the Manta as well:
http://snyderphonics.com/products.htm

I was considering what the best way to generalize this idea to an
isomorphic keyboard would be, and this has to be it, or at least some
combination of this and polyphonic aftertouch.

Mike

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 7:03 AM, andrewpmcpherson <andrewpmcpherson@yahoo.com
> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a composer and instrument designer in the Centre for Digital Music at
> Queen Mary, University of London. I thought you might be interested in a
> new keyboard instrument I've developed, which I launched last week on
> Kickstarter. The project is called TouchKeys, and it adds XY touch sensing
> to the surface of every key, so the pitch and timbre of the notes can be
> controlled just by moving the fingers around on the key surfaces. Here's
> the link:
>
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/instrumentslab/touchkeys-multi-touch-musical-keyboard
>
> And here's a video showing how vibrato and pitch bends can be done
> independently on each note:
>
> http://youtu.be/6fhmIqKHGs8
>
> Given the interest in controllers and keyboard layouts here, I thought you
> all might like this, and microtonal music is one of the applications I had
> in mind. To start with, bending the pitch of each note separately lets you
> achieve some pretty interesting pitch combinations; another option is that
> you can sound a different note depending on where you strike the key, so
> for instance quarter tones or a 43-tone Partch scale can be mapped onto
> just 12 keys.
>
> The Kickstarter campaign aims to gather support for a manufacturing run of
> the TouchKeys sensors (which go on any keyboard). It's a
> personal/university project, not a commercial one, and there's no profit
> involved here: my goal is to make interesting new music!
>
> Please drop me a line if you have any comments, questions or ideas. And if
> you're in the London area I'd be happy to show you the instrument in person.
>
> Best wishes,
> Andrew
>
> ------
> Andrew McPherson
> Lecturer in Digital Media
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewm
> http://andrewmcpherson.org
> andrewm@...
>
>
>

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

Hello Andrew,

I am one of the backers of your project for possible future adaptation to my M-Audio Oxygen 88 keyboard (I hope it will be compatible in this case!). The idea behind TouchKeys is amazing and the versatality of its usage as demonstrated in your tutorial videos are terrific. I can think of quite a few ways to employ your invention for the proper keyboard execution Turkish/Arabic/Persian/Azeri Maqam music. As you may already know, our maqams/mugams/dastgahs employ a variety of subtle microtones or pitch inflexions that are very characteristic in the intonation of such scale structures as Ushshaq, Huseyni, Huzzam, Suzinaq, Karjighar, Saba, Bestenigar, etc... TouchKeys can verily help realize the correct intonation for maqams requiring delicate pitch nuances without much hassle.

As a side note, I had spearheaded the Microtonalist Entrepreneurs International Meeting (MELM) 2011 in Istanbul and Ankara that was organized jointly by Isik and Baskent Universities. Your invention should be a cornerstone in a sequel, if any, to this conference. Alas, due to extreme political unrest in Turkey at the moment (Gezi Park crackdowns, Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials, etc...), we can't do much here in that direction. Maybe the event can be re-staged in the foreseeable future abroad. I've never been to England and would very much entertain a visit there in the context of such a venue.

Congratulations on your project and good luck with Kickstarter!

Cordially,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ozan Yarman

✩ ✩ ✩
www.ozanyarman.com

On Aug 6, 2013, at 2:03 PM, andrewpmcpherson wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm a composer and instrument designer in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London. I thought you might be interested in a new keyboard instrument I've developed, which I launched last week on Kickstarter. The project is called TouchKeys, and it adds XY touch sensing to the surface of every key, so the pitch and timbre of the notes can be controlled just by moving the fingers around on the key surfaces. Here's the link:
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/instrumentslab/touchkeys-multi-touch-musical-keyboard
>
> And here's a video showing how vibrato and pitch bends can be done independently on each note:
>
> http://youtu.be/6fhmIqKHGs8
>
> Given the interest in controllers and keyboard layouts here, I thought you all might like this, and microtonal music is one of the applications I had in mind. To start with, bending the pitch of each note separately lets you achieve some pretty interesting pitch combinations; another option is that you can sound a different note depending on where you strike the key, so for instance quarter tones or a 43-tone Partch scale can be mapped onto just 12 keys.
>
> The Kickstarter campaign aims to gather support for a manufacturing run of the TouchKeys sensors (which go on any keyboard). It's a personal/university project, not a commercial one, and there's no profit involved here: my goal is to make interesting new music!
>
> Please drop me a line if you have any comments, questions or ideas. And if you're in the London area I'd be happy to show you the instrument in person.
>
> Best wishes,
> Andrew
>
> ------
> Andrew McPherson
> Lecturer in Digital Media
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewm
> http://andrewmcpherson.org
> andrewm@...
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

This is great!

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 7:03 AM, andrewpmcpherson <andrewpmcpherson@...
> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a composer and instrument designer in the Centre for Digital Music at
> Queen Mary, University of London. I thought you might be interested in a
> new keyboard instrument I've developed, which I launched last week on
> Kickstarter. The project is called TouchKeys, and it adds XY touch sensing
> to the surface of every key, so the pitch and timbre of the notes can be
> controlled just by moving the fingers around on the key surfaces. Here's
> the link:
>
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/instrumentslab/touchkeys-multi-touch-musical-keyboard
>
> And here's a video showing how vibrato and pitch bends can be done
> independently on each note:
>
> http://youtu.be/6fhmIqKHGs8
>
> Given the interest in controllers and keyboard layouts here, I thought you
> all might like this, and microtonal music is one of the applications I had
> in mind. To start with, bending the pitch of each note separately lets you
> achieve some pretty interesting pitch combinations; another option is that
> you can sound a different note depending on where you strike the key, so
> for instance quarter tones or a 43-tone Partch scale can be mapped onto
> just 12 keys.
>
> The Kickstarter campaign aims to gather support for a manufacturing run of
> the TouchKeys sensors (which go on any keyboard). It's a
> personal/university project, not a commercial one, and there's no profit
> involved here: my goal is to make interesting new music!
>
> Please drop me a line if you have any comments, questions or ideas. And if
> you're in the London area I'd be happy to show you the instrument in person.
>
> Best wishes,
> Andrew
>
> ------
> Andrew McPherson
> Lecturer in Digital Media
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewm
> http://andrewmcpherson.org
> andrewm@eecs.qmul.ac.uk
>
>
>

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