[sdiy] Buchla-style or Synthi-style touch keyboard

[David Moylan]

I've 'thought' about making one of these many times.  My thought was to
use a microcontroller to measure rise time of an RC circuit with the
capacitive key as the C.  Since I've never worked with microcontrollers
the learning curve is pretty steep for me and I've got a host of other
things I want to build as well.

I'm in Philadelphia so I see Charles Cohen playing his Music Easel
fairly frequently.  Every time I do I'm reminded of how bad I want a
touch sensitive touch plate keyboard.  Granted, it's probably got a lot
to do with Charles' skill.  Nonetheless, touch sensitivity in general
really can add a lot to an instrument.

I don't care much about MIDI, but I assume if you used a fast enough
microcontroller you could measure the capacitance of the keys and do
polyphonic voice assignment and MIDI out, but that will either take me a
lot of time or take someone with more microcontroller experience or both.

If you've got the cash there's always the Serge TKB.  Those are still
available, right?

Dave

anthony wrote:
> Are they both capacitative? I know Buchla seemed to prefer these and I
> like his version that hardly looks like a piano keyboard at all.
> 
> What I'm curious about: have any of you had any lucky maing one of these?
> 
> I was thinking about using one in one of my "Synthasaurus" synths.
>