Microtonal keyboards out there?

Hey all,

I want to buy a microtonal keyboard, so I naturally started looking at
the AXiS-49. But now I'm wondering if there are any other options.

I just realized that the AXiS-49 has 98 keys, actually, so it seems
like the greatest keyboard ever. Are there any other keyboards that
compete with it? How about H-PI's stuff or the Starrzone or any of
that? I'm just curious what the options are.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> I want to buy a microtonal keyboard, so I naturally started looking at
> the AXiS-49. But now I'm wondering if there are any other options.
>
> I just realized that the AXiS-49 has 98 keys, actually, so it seems
> like the greatest keyboard ever. Are there any other keyboards that
> compete with it? How about H-PI's stuff or the Starrzone or any of
> that? I'm just curious what the options are.

I have a 16x16 Monome which has 256 leds/buttons. There are also
Monomes with 512 keys (see www.monome.org) but they are no longer
made. I know it's not the first choice for a microtonalist as it
has no velocity and the array is rectangular but there are also
other creative uses for a monome (I don't actually know if anyone
else is using it as a generalized keyboard). For some reason everyone
recommends hexagonal arrangement of keys/buttons but I really like a
certain mapping for 22-equal you can have in a rectangular layout:
left to right steps of 2/22, "down" to "up" steps of 11/22 (half-
octaves, tritones). Thus, the symmetrical decatonic maps as rows of
five buttons on top of each other while the pentachordal decatonics
map as rows of four and six. I also like the way the tetrads look on
this mapping.

Kalle

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> >
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I want to buy a microtonal keyboard, so I naturally started
> > looking at the AXiS-49. But now I'm wondering if there are any
> > other options.
> >
> > I just realized that the AXiS-49 has 98 keys, actually, so it
> > seems like the greatest keyboard ever. Are there any other
> > keyboards that compete with it? How about H-PI's stuff or the
> > Starrzone or any of that? I'm just curious what the options are.
>

Quite a fair amount of the currently available options are collected on the keyboards page of the Xenwiki (including links to some threads here where these are compared):

http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Microtonal+Keyboards

> I have a 16x16 Monome which has 256 leds/buttons. There are also
> Monomes with 512 keys (see www.monome.org) but they are no longer
> made. I know it's not the first choice for a microtonalist as it
> has no velocity and the array is rectangular but there are also
> other creative uses for a monome (I don't actually know if anyone
> else is using it as a generalized keyboard). For some reason
> everyone recommends hexagonal arrangement of keys/buttons but I
> really like a certain mapping for 22-equal you can have in a
> rectangular layout:
> left to right steps of 2/22, "down" to "up" steps of 11/22 (half-
> octaves, tritones). Thus, the symmetrical decatonic maps as rows of
> five buttons on top of each other while the pentachordal decatonics
> map as rows of four and six. I also like the way the tetrads look on
> this mapping.
>

Hmm, cool device! I added it to the keyboards page on the xenwiki. But lack of velocity is a non-neglectible flaw for me... But indeed, for 22edo with a layout of 2 and 11 steps, a hexagonal mapping is not that well suited... I wonder what other layouts are used/recommendable for 22edo?
--
Hans Straub

Hi Hans~
Would love to see a diagram of this.
In the years i worked with a 22 tone Eikosany i worked with three different mapping which i likewise should put up. The mapping is the same as any 22 tone would be.
I was amazed how each made me think differently and the obvious mapping and one of the worse ones changed places by the end.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "hstraub64" <straub@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hey all,
> > >
> > > I want to buy a microtonal keyboard, so I naturally started
> > > looking at the AXiS-49. But now I'm wondering if there are any
> > > other options.
> > >
> > > I just realized that the AXiS-49 has 98 keys, actually, so it
> > > seems like the greatest keyboard ever. Are there any other
> > > keyboards that compete with it? How about H-PI's stuff or the
> > > Starrzone or any of that? I'm just curious what the options are.
> >
>
> Quite a fair amount of the currently available options are collected on the keyboards page of the Xenwiki (including links to some threads here where these are compared):
>
> http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Microtonal+Keyboards
>
> > I have a 16x16 Monome which has 256 leds/buttons. There are also
> > Monomes with 512 keys (see www.monome.org) but they are no longer
> > made. I know it's not the first choice for a microtonalist as it
> > has no velocity and the array is rectangular but there are also
> > other creative uses for a monome (I don't actually know if anyone
> > else is using it as a generalized keyboard). For some reason
> > everyone recommends hexagonal arrangement of keys/buttons but I
> > really like a certain mapping for 22-equal you can have in a
> > rectangular layout:
> > left to right steps of 2/22, "down" to "up" steps of 11/22 (half-
> > octaves, tritones). Thus, the symmetrical decatonic maps as rows of
> > five buttons on top of each other while the pentachordal decatonics
> > map as rows of four and six. I also like the way the tetrads look on
> > this mapping.
> >
>
> Hmm, cool device! I added it to the keyboards page on the xenwiki. But lack of velocity is a non-neglectible flaw for me... But indeed, for 22edo with a layout of 2 and 11 steps, a hexagonal mapping is not that well suited... I wonder what other layouts are used/recommendable for 22edo?
> --
> Hans Straub
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Brofessor" <kraiggrady@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Hans~
> Would love to see a diagram of this.

Well, I don't really have one! I just made experiments based on Kalle's recangular layout he just described (up: 11 steps, left: 2 steps), and it seemed that this idea did not really work with the hexagonal Axis49 layout - somehow I could not get all 22 pitches within reasonable distance.

> In the years i worked with a 22 tone Eikosany i worked with three
> different mapping which i likewise should put up. The mapping is the
> same as any 22 tone would be.
> I was amazed how each made me think differently and the obvious
> mapping and one of the worse ones changed places by the end.
>

I would love to see your mappings! Do you have informations somewhere?
--
Hans Straub

Hi Hans,

> Well, I don't really have one! I just made experiments based on
> Kalle's recangular layout he just described (up: 11 steps,
> left: 2 steps), and it seemed that this idea did not really work
> with the hexagonal Axis49 layout - somehow I could not get all
> 22 pitches within reasonable distance.

I made a quick diagram of how it could go
http://lumma.org/temp/honeycomb.png
This has the same number of rows as the Axis 49, but is
missing two columns.

As you can see, one potentially annoying issue is the slant up
and to the right, not present on the Monome. The pattern can be
rotated so that it slants down and to the left, but can't be
made to go straight across within the confines of the
instrument -- no doubt as you discovered.

One thing I don't like about this layout is that its unit cell
is very oblong -- 11 x 2. So there are always a lot of
duplicates very close to any given note (admittedly these are
an octave apart). An interesting layout for sure, but probably
not the one I'd choose.

Paul Vandervoort did convince me that duplication can be good
for fingering, though. Off the top of my head, the hand itself
is about 5 x 3, or at least mine is (20 x 12 cm). So maybe
that's the ideal shape for the unit cell (if I let my pinky
come off the zero line then my thumb & middle finger can also
reach 20 cm, making the proportion 1 x 1).

On the other hand (har har) it's arguably easier to move our
hands straight out in front of the body than out to the sides
(while keeping the fingers pointed the same direction). This
is an argument to orient the long dimension of the unit cell
away from the body. And indeed, perhaps the Axis itself.
Then I suppose the ideal cell is on the order of 5 x Q, where
5Q ~~ N and N is the number of notes/octave. . .

-Carl

One of the the layouts i used (the first) which is the most common one is on page 12 of
http://anaphoria.com/xen3b.PDF
just ignore the ratios and look at the numbers with the the dots at the bottom of the keys.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Hans,
>
> > Well, I don't really have one! I just made experiments based on
> > Kalle's recangular layout he just described (up: 11 steps,
> > left: 2 steps), and it seemed that this idea did not really work
> > with the hexagonal Axis49 layout - somehow I could not get all
> > 22 pitches within reasonable distance.
>
> I made a quick diagram of how it could go
> http://lumma.org/temp/honeycomb.png
> This has the same number of rows as the Axis 49, but is
> missing two columns.
>
> As you can see, one potentially annoying issue is the slant up
> and to the right, not present on the Monome. The pattern can be
> rotated so that it slants down and to the left, but can't be
> made to go straight across within the confines of the
> instrument -- no doubt as you discovered.
>
> One thing I don't like about this layout is that its unit cell
> is very oblong -- 11 x 2. So there are always a lot of
> duplicates very close to any given note (admittedly these are
> an octave apart). An interesting layout for sure, but probably
> not the one I'd choose.
>
> Paul Vandervoort did convince me that duplication can be good
> for fingering, though. Off the top of my head, the hand itself
> is about 5 x 3, or at least mine is (20 x 12 cm). So maybe
> that's the ideal shape for the unit cell (if I let my pinky
> come off the zero line then my thumb & middle finger can also
> reach 20 cm, making the proportion 1 x 1).
>
> On the other hand (har har) it's arguably easier to move our
> hands straight out in front of the body than out to the sides
> (while keeping the fingers pointed the same direction). This
> is an argument to orient the long dimension of the unit cell
> away from the body. And indeed, perhaps the Axis itself.
> Then I suppose the ideal cell is on the order of 5 x Q, where
> 5Q ~~ N and N is the number of notes/octave. . .
>
> -Carl
>