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

[cheater cheater]

The electronic part is by no means difficult. You can just use the
MIDI Box platform for literally anything that midi controllers can do.
The mechanical part is the big problem. I think I might go as far as
manufacture my own keys at some point. I have been lately considering
building an action which allows for (polyphonic) aftertouch without
extorting a lot of pressure with your hands, which would give you a
lot of precision. The same action would also address the possibility
of having negative aftertouch: meaning you press the key, and then you
*lessen* the pressure. It would seem there would only be a separate
assembly for the white and the black key, and also the keybed skeleton
would be the most expensive part (it could perhaps be made out of
welded sheet metal). The enclosure is probably left up to anyone
interested to DIY. Then the next very difficult thing to do would be
to figure out the distance meter for the key: I would probably go for
something optical, and this assembly could be quite difficult, and
parts hard to source. On the other hand a custom board like this could
award unparalleled expressiveness, even more so to someone who could
be bothered to write something like their own max/msp patches for it.
If you ever used a polyphonic aftertouch keyboard you may have an
inkling of where this can go if the key position is transferred at
audio rate. Now imagine each key has a transducer inside it that
provides acoustic feedback from the note that key is actuating. You
could do the infinite-guitar-sustain thing. But that already gets
ridiculously expensive per a single key, and you'd probably want at
least 2 octaves just to test and muck about.. and 112 for a keyboard
the size of a 96-key grand (notice that each 'octave' has 14 keys now
and not 12)

Just out of curiosity, and this is in no way an obligation to continue
working on this, but would anyone be interested in buying parts for
such a hardware platform if i made them available in some form of
group buy?

D.

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Andrew Scheidler <oozitron at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's some interesting stuff that Doepfer makes that might be of interest.
>
> IIRC, one is a kit with 61 little momentary buttons.  They all plug into a
> little unit that then spits out 61 different MIDI notes.  It's designed as a
> way to make an old pre-MIDI keyboard (say a Juno-6) into a MIDI controller
> keyboard.  But of course they're no reason you couldn't arrange the 61
> switches into an entirely different layout.
>
> ah...  it's the CTM64 Contact To MIDI Interface
>
> and it has 64 buttons  :)
>
> Drew
>
> On 2/28/09, cheater cheater <cheater00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I can see what you mean but it would be very cumbersome and all the
>> pianist motions would have to be abandoned for such an approach.
>>
>> It could be interesting to have that though in order to be able to
>> push those buttons *up*.... now that got me thinking.
>> Or maybe a row of switches above the keyboard which could send out
>> some additional pitch-related information, like: 'i want this note to
>> have a different character'. Or a per-note sustain. Or selection of
>> output channel for the certain note...
>> 88 DPST switches (or actually 96) could be a bit cumbersome to install
>> and maintain though I think
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Ingo Debus <igg.debus at t-online.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > Am 27.02.2009 um 11:32 schrieb cheater cheater:
>> >
>> >> 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.
>> >
>> > Here's another, perhaps goofy idea:
>> > Have a row of rectangular white keys, just like the white keys of a
>> > piano,
>> > but without the gaps for the black keys. The black keys are thin "tabs"
>> > above that row, pivoted behind the front panel, much like the tab
>> > switches
>> > of a M-series Hammond organ. They could have about the size of
>> > traditional
>> > black keys, but would probably be placed a bit higher.
>> > This way you can have white keys of traditional width, perhaps even
>> > narrower, which can still easily be pressed in the black-key-area,
>> > because
>> > you press them under, not between the black keys. It would be a bit more
>> > difficult to press a black and then a adjacent white (or vice versa) key
>> > with the same finger.
>> >
>> > Evereybody got what I mean? It's difficult to describe without a
>> > drawing.
>> >
>> > Ingo
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>> >
>
>