Aaron Hunt
H-Pi Instruments
http://www.h-pi.com

Yours,
Aaron Hunt
H-Pi Instruments
http://www.h-pi.com

“If I were to begin my career anew it would be on this keyboard.” - Arthur Rubinstein

“This invention will have replaced the present piano keyboard in fifty years’ time!” - Franz Liszt

I think the only reason it didn’t take off is because companies were reluctant to compete with traditional pianos. But now there’s no excuse: I picked up a MIDI keyboard for $8 at a charity shop. They’re just so cheap to make they get thrown out!

Good Luck,

Jim

With an electronic instrument, and especially one with an isomorphic (generalized) keyboard, it is convenient to think in terms of intervals rather than pitches. For example, imagine that (a) the buttons of an isomorphic keyboard are labelled with Do, Re, Mi, etc. rather than with Bb, C, D, etc., and that (b) electronic transposition is used to associate the desired tonic pitch with the appropriate tonic button. (So, in Bb major, Bb would be associated with Do, whereas in Bb minor, Bb would be associated with La.) On the Thummer’s Wicki note-layout (www.thummer.com), this places the notes of the current key’s diatonic scale on the central white notes. With (a) 19 notes per octave, (b) the current key’s diatonic scale centered on the keyboard, and (b) the syntonic temperament (in which the major third is four tempered perfect fifths minus two octaves), the most common intervals of Common Practice 5-limit tonal harmony fall on the 19 buttons of the Thummer’s keyboard, whether the current tuning is 7-tet (P5=686), quarter-comma meantone (P5=696), 12-tet (P5=700), Pythagorean (P5=702), 17-tet (P5=706), 5-tet (P5=720), or whatever.

Furthermore, on such a keyboard, the shape of a given musical structure (such as the major triad Do-Mi-So) is the same all across the syntonic temperament’s tuning continuum, from 7-tet to 5-tet. So once you’ve learned to play a given musical structure — a chord, a chord progression, a melody, whatever — in one tuning, you’ve learned how to play it in every tuning of that same temperament.

This makes it possible for a performer to change tuning dynamically, at run time, while playing a song, without changing fingering. This makes it possible to play polyphonic tuning bends, temperament modulations, and even entirely new chord progressions (see http://www.thummer.com/ThumTone/X_System_Overview.pdf). The Wicki layout used by the Thummer is the optimal layout for this kind of “dynamic tuning.”

The point being: for any rank-2 tuning in the syntonic temperament’s valid tuning range, 19 buttons per octave is quite enough. For the schismatic temperament, you only need 21. I’m not sure about other temperaments, but I can pretty much guarantee that 211 buttons per octave is excessive.

An article on tuning invariance has recently been accepted by the Computer Music Journal, and another on metrics for comparing isomorphic note layouts is under peer review at the Journal of Mathematics and Music.

A skeletal overview of the ideas on which these papers are based can be found at http://www.thummer.com/ThumTone/X_System.pdf.

The advantages of the Thummer over the various other isomorphic keyboards available are that (a) it’s more expressive, offering up to 13 degrees of freedom; (b) it’s tiny, being about the size and weight of a thick paperback book, partially opened; and (b) it’s cheap, at under US$500.

Now, if only I can get the darn thing done and on the market! “Shipping” is also a very important feature! ;-)

Jim Plamondon
CEO, Thumtronics Inc
The New Shape of Music(tm)
http://www.thummer.com
Austin, Texas

anyone know?

http://www.starrlabs.com/keyboards.html

I saw a working prototype in 1998, and I think the first one shipped a year later.

Also, I didn’t see the Cortex Design Terpstra keyboard mentioned in this thread…

http://www.cortex-design.com

Not the first, but given that each key has a hall-effect sensor whose output can be individually mapped to a continuous controller, maybe the best…

-Carl