I think Joe unfortunately just got stuck with a bad unit, which is a shame, cause I know how long and hard he contemplated getting one (and I encouraged him).
Joe, did you ever try asking Chromatone/ Muto for a replacement unit?
On Apr 14, 2016, at 2:41 AM, Corky Peavy wrote:Joe you mention that you did not find the chromatone pleasant - and you meant more than just the sound, but the feel I think. Since I'm still building (just came in from the shop) I have options. What was wrong, how should it be from your point of view? With 4 rows the travel distance variance and force to press required is pretty dramatic between top and bottom row. I notice the chromatone has very small keys. I'm trying to make my keys about the size of the bottom of white keys on a normal piano.
Funny your adapters should wobble. They look pretty solid. The adapters on my melodica are way higher, but no wobbling there. Is it the keyboard keys themselves that are moving maybe?
Yes, now that I look at it, it’s the underlying keyboard. I got two very similar keyboards off Craig’s List very cheaply to play with. I thought they were almost identical, but I see now that the one I actually used has much less stable keys.
The stiff feel of the upper row is a consequence of your construction. In a new project you might want to move all rows outward, but then the outer row will hardly have any resistance.
Right, I tried to do several things to make this manageable, with “enough” but still not wonderful success. I made the keys a little shorter than I wanted, and I moved the bottom row almost completely beyond the edge of the underlying keys so the top row would be further from the hinge. There are a few things that might help further:
* Make the keys even shorter - but that is not desirable for other reasons of course.
* Make a much bigger height difference with the keys literally overlapping, but I doubt if that would be a good thing.
* Find a cheap mass market keyboard that often shows up on Craig’s List / Ebay that has a hinge further back. The reason I chose Yamaha over Casio is because their “full size” keys are longer, so I think that helped keep me further from the hinge and made 4 rows workable at least. I wonder if one exists with more travel up into the keyboard. For my goals it has to be cheap (< $100 used, preferably <$50) and readily available too.
About offering a 'conversion kit': why not start 'on demand'?
Well, making one is a lot of work / expense. Making 20 is not that much harder. In fact, making 20 I could probably take my specs to a shop and have them made with much higher quality and consistency. For example even carefully using jigs I still had to hand tune the blocks a little to get nice even heights and angles.
But you may want to perfect your design first. And it would be interesting to try and find a midi controller with a reasonable touch and really narrow keys, if such a thing exists. you could then customize your kit to fit that, so that octave span would be narrow.
That *is* attractive- and Paul links a couple that meet the criteria. However if the key length / distance to the hinge is less so 3 rows may be the usable limit before the upper row/bottom row stiffness / throw variance get’s too extreme. I wonder if that would be a good trade off - give up the 4th row in exchange for wider reach left to right.
The way I look at this is it’s a cheap way to get in the game, but it probably can’t ever be a great way. I’m thinking the kit could be done for around $80 in groups of 20, or if there was more interest possibly down to $40. Then perhaps enough of a market could be created to inspire a commercial outfit to produce them.
By the way: will you be able to get the first row keys of for lowering them?
Yes, it’s not too much of a problem. About 2-3 hours work. After 50is that’s not so bad, ha ha. But I want to finish the Dodeka conversion of the other keyboard before returning to Janko.
Corky,Won't moving the hinge forward give you an unacceptable reach to the keys?What I had in mind was more like a "bridge" over the whole instrument;the downside would be cutting into knee room underneath.You can't really decide which "horse" is best without riding them!I gave a serious 2 months to learning to play Chromatone,and I only did a couple dozen "easy beginner" pieces.And even that is hardly enough time to get a real feel for the instrument even to the level at which I can play the conventional piano (roughly book 2-3).As I've said elsewhere, I can't (yet?) agree with claims that a new keyboard layout makes the instrument "dramatically easier to learn and play". But on that score I would defer to those with more experience, like Paul Vandervoort and Roy Pertchik.The difference between the straight 6-6 and Janko is just that Janko gives you keys closer together at the cost of interleaving finger pads for the two whole-tone scales.On Apr 30, 2016, at 2:30 AM, Corky Peavy wrote:Hmmm, I did not realize this email does not appear on the board so I missed it! Yes, I agree the only real solution to getting better results is a longer hinge. I think it will be hard to build though. If it is a "set on top" adapter, then it has to be responsible for keeping the keys from sliding/wobbling left to right. I could imagine something like this, where it actually glues to the bottom of the keyboard, and to the keys themselves:This would allow the use of a smaller keyboard like Paul was suggesting, giving better coverage and I think better playability. Right now, the keys actually seem uncomfortably far apart.I am far enough into it to see that fingering is kinda weird. I still plan to finish the straight key keyboard too pretty soon. (Danskin? it's called?) I'd don't want to get too deep to change my mind before committing. Also there is just the black/white/black/white option which is kinda similar. I'm itching to settle down and see if I can learn to really play *something*, but don't want to pick a terrible horse. :-/Thanks for your input!
On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 7:45 PM, Joseph Austin wrote:Corky,I don't recall whether I've mentioned this before.One solution to you key-length problem is to build the whole attachment as a "bridge" over the whole keyboard.Essentially, instead of extended your keys forward of the keyboard, extend them back well beyond the back of the keyboard.I'll try a diagram (side view):-------------------------------------------------------+|key hinge your key |@---------------------------------------------------+ |# | |# | |# ====================+ |__|# " keyboard :::::::::::@ access hinge ================================This way, you can position your key hinge as far back as you please,while the vertical movement of the front of your key will match the vertical movement of the keyboard key,and you will take full advantage of the return-force of the keyboard key as well.Of course, what you lose is access to the controls that most cheap keyboard makers put on the flat top of the keyboard,(where you can't conveniently see them while playing, and which puts the music rack at the back instead of close enough to read!)But you could design the whole contraption so it could be lifted for set-up.That's no worse than an acoustic piano, which has only one tone configuration!Joe Austin
The thing that is giving me pause on Janko is that it does not exactly deliver on the 1 shape = 1 sound idea. It's true that you can always do this for a major triad: