[sdiy] Where to get special white keys?

[Ingo Debus]

Am 25.02.2009 um 20:32 schrieb cheater cheater:

> I'm slowly thinking of building my own keyboard. It would not have the
> usual octave pattern/layout, and instead have alternating white and
> black keys.

Hey, that's an idea I had decades ago! It seemed quite appealing to  
me: learn two major scales, one starting on a black, one on a white  
key and you can play them all. Also, the player isn't as affixed to  
traditional western scales as with the piano-type keyboard.
There are alternative notation systems that would reflect that type  
of keyboard pretty well. See here:
http://musicnotation.org/


> Now the black key is not a problem... where would I get a white key
> shaped like that, though?

Do you want to keep the width of the white keys, with a smaller width  
of an octave, or do you want to keep the width of an octave, with  
wider white keys? In the former case the distance between the black  
keys would decrease, and using traditionally sized black keys would  
make it difficult to place a finger on a white key between black  
keys. But in the latter case I don't see any alternative to making  
keys from scatch.

Please keep us posted!

Ingo