Son of Thummer: a jammer is born

Success is sweet.  (updated thrice: my Jammer is now colored)

Two Axis-49s tranformed into a jammer

It''s been a looooonng road to trudge, but finally, at last, I have assembled a full-fledged jammer, the musical instrument of my dreams, and the closest approximation of the fabled Thummer that we are ever likely to see.

  

Jammer #3

What you see:

2 axis keyboards in folded-scale mode, one for each hand, 98 keys under each hand.

A black Korg nanoPad: my pitch bend and special controls / triggers

A white Korg nanoKey: this is my foot-pedal to-be.

Unseen: A modest little program running on a netbook whcih glues it all together.

Now the real work begins: managing expectations and learning to play the thing.

So what is the thing, really?

This is a full-flged jammer, a keyboard with 2 keyboards, one for each hand.

The keys are configured to play in a jammer layout: with the major scale folded upward; technically known as Wicki/Hayden, so that all important keys are right under the hand, and the octaves ascend vertically. They will be 7 octaves "high".

The key colouring does not yet match the pattern. Players will be able to do cool tricks like assign them to separate instruments, alter the octaves played by each hand, and other things.

 

In the centre is a Korg nanoPad, with the touchpad placed to allow tricks such as pitchbending to happen as one plays, using the thumbs.

 

To the bottom is my foot-pedal, made from a Korg nanoKey. It will have independent sustain pedals and other special keyboard controls, one set for each keyboard.

Total cost? Under a thousand dollars for a keyboard that is more expressive than any other keyboard in the world, and may rival or exceed a guitar.

Jim Plamondon, definately a world expert on the subject,  commented to me:

Major coolness!   :-)

If enough people make their own jammers and post YouTube demos of cool music that could only be made with a jammer, then perhaps some smart & hungry Chinese company will start making tiny integrated jammers, complete with internal motion sensors and fore-arm braces, mass-produced at a cheap price.

I can't emphasize enough that isomorphism ("same fingering in every key") alone has never been sufficient to bring market success.  It's been offered, off and on, since the 1880's, and the market has never responded. To break through, the jammer needs at least one additional benefit, such as extra expressive power (through internal motion sensors, for example) or novel musical effects (such as dynamic tonality).

Your DIY jammer is a great step in that direction.

Kudos!  :-)

With the nanoPad in the middle, this is going to be one humdinger of an expressive device.

The new powerful Axis-49 Tweak routine that glues it together is available here: http://www.box.net/shared/vdm1qscvmc

And for your reference:
My Box.Net folder: http://www.box.net/shared/9988kfzpic and the old Tweak routine: http://www.box.net/shared/0t3hm9hhi5

The new routine features:

- 2 keyboard input, with separate right and left translation tables. You can customize your translation tables to suit your needs.
- Optional adjustable velocity curve table. It's not fancy - you can't tweak it in real-time.
- A pair of mouse-able buttons to turn on/off the above translations.
- last-note struck display, one for each side.
- prettier display than the mark 1 version.
- can take input from a pitch bend instrument and bend the sound - this is really crude; just demos it can be done.
- also included are semi-tone shift, octave shift controls

No PC keyboard control (eg. Page up/Page Down for octave shift.) yet.

I've lots of things I' d love to do, but this is it: this is enough keys features to help practicing go well.
Back to practicing on my new, improved, fully featured jammer.

Ken.

Comments

[MusicScienceGuy]

I agree with all of John's points above. I note that the Harmonic Axis method seems to have two fingerings, and to my eye and experiment, was harder to relate to a score.
Ken.

[MusicLearner]

[this is good]

Wow, impressive.

 

Music Learner

[John M.]

Here are the advantages of the wicki/hayden layout:
1. Compact diatonic scale. The major scale and the modes thereof are right under the fingers.  I have been practicing the layout on my keyboard and got my axis a few days ago and have found that most musical ideas such as scales scales and chords to be far more intuitive on the wicki/hayden layout than the layout the axis originally used.  The fact that the octave is directly above a given note (up two rows) is very useful and contributes to its intuitive nature.
2. Less redundant notes per octave. The axis has every single note up the chromatic scale doubled in it's layout for convenience and ergonomics, whereas the same button field with a wicki/hayden layout has less redundancy, and therefor a larger range. The ideal wicki/hayden layout has actually nine or ten buttons per horizontal row as opposed to seven and has slightly more redundancy than the one he's created here, but still less than the axis layout.
3. The redundant notes that the wicki/hayden layout presents are relevant theoretically. On the wicki/hayden layout there is a button on the left side of the diatonic scale where the flats are for Eb, and a different button on the right side for D#.
This theory leads to real applications, like if one were to decide to use a tuning with an altered size fifth, in which case there would be a slight difference between Eb and D# and this layout would allow one to play one or the other depending on which diatonic note was modified.
This is because instead of having its layout defined by a number of semitones per interval, the wicki/hayden layout lends itself to a method where all notes are derived from the parameters of the size (in cents) of the fifth and octave:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)http://www.thummer.com/papers/matrix.pdfThese are the same parameters off of which tuning in the syntonic temperament is based, which is tied in with another advantage:
4. The possibility of fingering invariance across different tunings.  All two dimensional layouts have the possibility to play in alternate tunings if one defines different sizes for the fifth and octave and uses these parameters to define the rest of the layout, but because the wicki/hayden layout is built off of these intervals it requires far fewer buttons/octave to play them.http://www.thummer.com/ThumTone/Tuning_Invariant_Layouts_Last_Draft.pdf
Most of this I learned directly from Jim Plamondon of Thumtronics(http://www.thummer.com/)and from the papers above which he, in cooperation with others, has written.

[Keats' Handwriting]

Oh - also- you just post a youtube vid- Id like to see the jammer in action!

[Keats' Handwriting]

ow that is pretty sweet... I esp like the nano pad in the middle. very creative. I just got a nanopad and i really like it . great deal.

 

also got a nanokontrol, but i'm assuming you dont work with filters and all that?

 

also the nanokeys- seems a bit expensive for a foot  controller that is basically just an on and off switch.  CDM had a post on rigging up a keyboard (QWERTY) and taking out the keys.  Could be free if youve got keyboards laying around like i do.

 

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/08/02/get-loopy-with-the-diy-10-ableton-footcontroller-no-soldering-required/

 

anyways, kudos again.

 

p.s.  I know you explained it in previous posts, but I had a hard time understanding why you liked the Wicki pattern (is that the name for the reconfiguered pattern?) instead of the pattern that the axis comes with.

 

Do you find it easier to play with the Wicki layout?

[William Croft]

Very cool Mr. Ken.  Keep improvising!

[Grant Muller]

Wow, that's excellent! I'd like to hear some of the output from this setup. Is it relatively easy to interact with?

[John M.]

Congratulations Ken, I really dig the setup with the nanopad.  I don't have one, would you highly recommend it?


Looks professional :-)