[AH] Re: [sdiy] Where to get special white keys?

[cheater cheater]

Guys, guys. You're missing the point. We're not trying for different
colored big keys because we want octaves that are 4 tones long and
stuff like that! Why get locked in 12-note scales?

I'd go as far as making all the keys white.
Or maybe make them all milky white and have blue and orange diodes in
them to change colors depending on the scale and layout you select?
Hmm!

I've seen some talk about different groupings of black and white keys.
A keyboard that's black-white-black-white can do all of them, all you
need to do is pretend some of the black keys don't exist.

Or alternatively take a normal piano, and smash a blue note on a black
key between E and F. And a sound that's half an octave above the blue
note, between B and C. See how that works out well for jazz people?

Now with regards to the width of the keys:
Using a D key would be possible with very thin black keys.
I know about the problem of the width of the space between black keys,
and therefore think that a compromise between the width of the black
key being smaller and the width of the white key being bigger has to
be made. Definitely if you put D keys next to each other the resulting
width of the black key would not be sufficient, but it's near. I think
a thin black key is pretty good - I'd bought an Ensoniq SQ80 lately
and it suprised me very much by having slightly-thinner-than-usually
black keys. They're very comfortable and my sausage fingers finally
fit between them. Add polyphonic aftertouch and it's one of the best
synth keyboards ever.

As for Yamaha keys: DX keyboards use separate keys. The spring-plate
action is one of the best ever on a synth, btw.
Cheap keyboards use banks, but keys can tear/break away from those
banks after some prolonged use.

Regarding width of the keys again: Maybe a curved keyboard could be
the answer. imagine a black-white-black-white keyboard curved around
the player. The back-end of the white keys is now comfortably wide.
The space between the front of the black keys still isn't, so make the
front of the black keys narrower - they'll be somewhat wedge-shaped in
that case. The whole thing could be pretty comfortable, the question
is if playing glissandos would be very easy. The motion wouldn't be
that different.

Oh, did I mention that by selecting the right scale and layout
(including skipping black keys), you can make your glissandos sound
any way you want?

D.

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Dave Kendall <davekendall at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 27, 2009, at 08:38, Dave Kendall wrote:
>
>> On Feb 27, 2009, at 00:57, Rich Holmes wrote:
>>>
>>> (Or am I missing something? Surely the D/G/A keys are the right shape?)
>>
>> The "D" key is symmetrical, the G and A keys aren't.
>> Using D keys and regular black keys would give a gap between each white
>> key at the front. The portion of the white key toward the back, i.e. the bit
>> directly between the adjacent black keys would need to be made thinner.
>>
> Actually, to preserve the spacing between the black keys, the wide bits at
> the front of the white keys should be made wider....
>
> cheers,
> Dave
>
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