A cheap way to make a microtonal keyboard

[MusicScienceGuy]

Hi,
I'm trying hard to develop a new keyboard called a jammer, simular to
the Thummer (RIP) that you may have heard about. I created mine by
adapting a couple of commercial AXiS-49's from C-Thru Music ($500) and
reprogramming the key layout using Max/MSP. It's just occurred to me
that it would be fairly simple to convert the key arrangement to a
highly-microtonal arrangement by taking advantage of the hexagonal
array the jammer uses.

TO quote my posting in the C-Thru forum:
"It has long struck me that, with Max/MSP or Pure Data, or one of the
other midi programming languages, that it would be dead simple to make
some pairing of Axis keys produce, instead of the normal, boring "Note
A + Note B" combination, instead produce a hybrid note with unusual
features.

While the sky is the limit as far as what the term hybrid note can
mean, what pops immediately to mind is microtonality. There are very
many people investigating and working with microtonality, but one
limit, up to now, has been the availability of keyboards, the few
keyboards available are very expensive and often unwieldy.
Aside: the other limit has been a theory of microtonality: I will
someday post simple instructions on how to make a microtonality slide-
rule style chord calculator, but I digress.

With the Axis keyboards, most of the keys have 3 neighbor connections
that are available for making hybrid notes, unlike on a regular
keyboard that only has one. This gives dazzling possibilities - an
Axis-49 could be made to play nearly 300 micro-tonal notes. These
would be available in real-time, without large hand movements, just
small finger movements. Of course, since this robs the axis of the
ability to play adjacent-note intervals, a player might need 2
keyboards to make decent chords, but the microtonal people may not
care."


I have no time and little interest in pursuing this particular ball
(learning complexities of the regular scale is my challenge), but if
you in the microtonality world would be interested, please let me know
and I'll write up my idea.

Ken Rushton :ugeek:
MusicScienceGuy.vox.com

[carl]

Hi Ken!

I'm a big fan of your blog, sometime correspondent of Plamondon's,
and a huge advocate of the Opal/Axis keyboards. I saw your recent
post about a double Axis-49 controller. I had been thinking along
similar lines, though the redundant keys on the 49 severely limit
microtonal possibilities, and I haven't as yet been able to convince
myself to spend for the 64 considering it doesn't have USB MIDI.

I'm having a bit of trouble following your proposal -- could you
elucidate? I get the basic idea, but don't understand the
significance
of there being more adjacent keys on the Axis than the Halberstadt.

-Carl