MIDI Keyboards

This question may have been discussed before in the group; I searched
the archive quickly and spotted only a few vaguely related threads.
Here's the deal:

Now that VirSyn Tera 2.0 loads .scl files (in a primitive way, but it
works) it has finally become practical to do realtime microtonal music
on a computer. The weak link in the chain is now the MIDI keyboard. If I
were satisfied to use 12 notes per octave (tuned in some manner or
other), my existing MIDI master keyboard would be just peachy, but I'm
not, so it's not.

My choices seem to be as follows:

1) Assign the tuning to my existing MIDI keyboard and try to keep my
head from exploding while I keep track of the fingerings of various
intervals. Been trying this. Pretty discouraging. Every time you want to
add or subtract a pitch from the scale, your fingerings go all to heck.

2) Create 12-note subsets of the tuning, assign them to different MIDI
channels, and put the piece of music together like a jigsaw puzzle,
dovetailing phrases and individual notes on different channels in order
to record a single phrase. Tried this with NI Reaktor. It's even more
difficult.

3) Find a decent (and affordable) generalized keyboard with lots of keys
and MIDI output.

4) Give up and go back to Csound.

Option 3 is lookin' pretty good ... but I don't know of such a keyboard.
Hence this message. I know Starr Labs makes a couple of generalized
keyboards (the U990 and U648), but they ain't cheap. Has anyone in this
group had any experience with these boards? Are they reliable
mechanically? Are there other hardware options that I haven't stumbled
onto yet?

Thanks most humbly for any leads you can provide!

--Jim Aikin (www.musicwords.net)

>Option 3 is lookin' pretty good ... but I don't know of such a keyboard.
>Hence this message. I know Starr Labs makes a couple of generalized
>keyboards (the U990 and U648), but they ain't cheap. Has anyone in this
>group had any experience with these boards? Are they reliable
>mechanically?

The only person I know of to get one was a friend of John Starrett.
Haven't heard from him lately, and I don't think he's on this board.

They're aren't really any moving parts on this keyboard, so my
guess is they're very mechanically reliable.

>Are there other hardware options that I haven't stumbled onto yet?

Nope.

-Carl

Jim Aiken wrote:

3) Find a decent (and affordable) generalized keyboard with lots of keys
and MIDI output.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are any cheap interfaces...
personally, I use the Starr labs MIDI guitars and it works quite well
- it gets away from the 7+5 paradigm, though of course it is just a
rectangular grid of keys...

I'm happy to hear about another member of the microtonal softsynth
family (Virsyn). I know that Kontakt FM has tuning tables, and
Bitheadz Unity can read in (text file) tuning tables.

BTW - I'm a big fan of your columns in Keyboard, and I know that many
on this list appreciate your mentioning the (re)tuning abilities of
keyboards and software in your reviews.

--Bill Sethares

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_49470.html#49494

> >Option 3 is lookin' pretty good ... but I don't know of such a
keyboard.
> >Hence this message. I know Starr Labs makes a couple of generalized
> >keyboards (the U990 and U648), but they ain't cheap. Has anyone in
this
> >group had any experience with these boards? Are they reliable
> >mechanically?
>
> The only person I know of to get one was a friend of John Starrett.
> Haven't heard from him lately, and I don't think he's on this board.
>
> They're aren't really any moving parts on this keyboard, so my
> guess is they're very mechanically reliable.
>
> >Are there other hardware options that I haven't stumbled onto yet?
>
> Nope.
>
> -Carl

***Speaking of which, I've discovered I'm missing the *Tuning Punks*
and wanted to contact John Starrett about his hosting it again or, if
he lacks time, finding another hoster (yes maybe even yours
truly...) In any case, I've not heard back from him. Anybody still
in touch with John??

J. Pehrson