Clavette's availability

I thank Brian VERY MUCH for his enthusiasm regarding the Clavette. I know
that it certainly has been enthusiastically received in concert, and in
demonstrations like those at the 1995 SEAMUS and International Computer Music
Conferences. Among those on this list, Doug Keislar, Gregory Taylor, Steve
Curtin, and perhaps some others have seen it in action in person.

Just a little clarification: The Clavette keyboard is roughly 8.5 x 11 inches
in size, with 124 keys within this space, at approximately "typewriter" size
and distance from one another. They are layed out as a tesselation of hexagons--
meaning that the hexagons completely fill the plane with no 'spaces' between th
them.
As far as I understand Bosanquet's design, this is not at all the same. I refer
to it as generalized because I can write code which can arbitralily assign any
of the 124 keys to any MIDI note numbers. I frequently make use of key layouts
with generalized patterns like those invented by Siemen Terpstra and perhaps
others, but I have also layed out the pitches on the keyboard in other ways is
if the music required it.

Unfortunately, programming the STEIM SensorLab is not a trivial procedure, but
if somehow additional copies of the Clavette 'as-is' were distributed, I could
include a 'code template' which would considerably simplifiy the progamming
task.

In any case, I don't believe that STEIM is interested in making more of this
generation of SensorLab available, and regrettably the powers that be at the
Institute of Sonology share this overly anti-capitalistic attitude. Plus, I
would REALLY like to make a keyboard with velocity-sensitive keys, which hophoope-
fully would be easier to program.

Therefore, I think it's best if I focus my energies on the Clavette: The Next
Generation. I could then have better control over the technology, and its
expressive potentials would be even greater.

Of course, if anyone reading this has $50,000 or more to spare, perhaps I
could quit my current day job, hire an electronics engineer, and have the
current version of the Clavette, or a near replica, out on the market. But
otherwise, I DO have some good leads here on getting the new version started,
and although it may take some time before it's complete and widely available,
please DO believe it is important for me to make this available to more people
than just Harold Fortuin. But, without more pennies from heaven at that time,
the complete hardware probably won't be cheap. But perhaps I could sell the
plans at that time too.

Do any of you know some details about the Francois Paris keyboard?

Brian: Please send me details about the Hermann Pedtke keyboard.

Sorry for any wierd typos.

Musically yours,
Harold Fortuin
hfortuin@delphi.com

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