Welcome

Ever longed to quickly learn an expressive musical instrument?

I and my friends are attempting to write out information about music, especially how to learn it, make it, and how the thing actually works, all in a more-or-less scientific (yet whimsical) way.

Warning, this is my personal blog, and is apt to contain babbling, for more organized information on alternative, innovative instruments, See: Alternative Keyboards, which is much more organized and readible.

This site's Current focus is a faster, innovative music keyboard called a jammer keyboard, here is the Wikipedia article.

And here is a link to John Moriarty playing a jammer.

In a nutshell, we are combining current music theory, modern knowledge and simple ergonomics to produce "piano 2.0"; an improved musical keyboard,mostly built on the $430 AXiS-49 keyboard from C-Thru  plus a few other things. 

I've built four jammers and have found they have very significant advantages over the traditional design .. and few disadvantages too, of course.

In balance, they are faster to learn, very significantly faster and easier to play and more expressive. They are also easier to play by ear, in other words, to jam, hence the name.

In practical terms, it takes 10 years to become skilled enough to be passable pianist. With the jammer design, the same level should be reachable in 3 yrs. It's not a free lunch, but it is less expensive, yet ultimately a better value.

Indeed, the meshing of the keyboard layout with music theory, kinesiology and human perception is a great leap forward: it's fun to have an instrument where the melody and the chords intertwine, where it's blink'n easy to add chords to a melody and music just plain makes sense.

Like children, it takes a community to grow an innovation, so please join in; post your ideas and comments. This is your opportunity to make a difference, to get in at the start of something very cool, and have fun doing it.

Ken Rushton, MusicScienceGuy

Comments

[MusicScienceGuy]

Joe, I'm afraid I can't be of much help with interfacing to Ableton, as I've never used it.
While it looks like a good system, and Max supports it well through Live, I've never had the time.

Try it, it does not look that hard. When you do get it working, please let us know your findings. Note that all my source code is available and fairly well annotated. Let me know where the manual is confusing!

Thus grows our expertise.
Ken.

[Joe Oppenheimer]

Hi Ken,

I have found and downloaded your Midi Integrator on the road to achieving my ultimate busking setup - which involved controlling Ableton from a Bluetooth keyboard, at least for now.

I'm looking forward to learning more about Max and such figuring out how to navigate your program, but what I need first... Is to get Midi Integrator talking to Ableton. Then I can properly use my keyboard to control loops - as each one talks directly to a looper function AND chooses the right audio pathway, sending MIDI through your program.

What is it I need to do?

Joe

[Ken Rushton]

Sergio, I can't make out much of the theory, as it's in a language I don't know.
What I can understand seems a relatively straightforward restating of music theory and using it to build several musical patterns.

Ken.

[Ken Rushton]

I thought that people can see my email address on this blog. My email address is "MusicScienceGuy" (capitalization not important) (At) Shaw.ca

Alternately, you can try bogrushton ((a.t.)) gmail.com

Ken.

Baros, I'll email you.

[Sergio Aschero]

http://cmup.fc.up.pt/cmup/numerofonia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9YC4X9J0n0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sWBHdzAmuQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LB37iHBol8

Sergio Aschero
Aschero's Numberphony

[Baros]

Hey Ken

I would like to quote you and use some of your pictures in a presentation. I would also like to contribute with a detailed description of a great keyboard for your site, altkeyboards.com.

I have no clue on how to contact you so please send me a mail at baros_ilogic \at/ yahoo.com

[Gonzalo]

Hello Ken,
been following sporadically since the demise of the Thummer. Was one of those who actually hoped for an easy and logical instrument to learn and express myself.

Wanted to bring to your attention a couple of projects that look interesting:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/88785103/wicki-hayden-keyboard-midi-controller
http://www.mengqimusic.com/page/4

And this other one:

http://www.gadgetina.com/

Also wanted to mention that the website http://www.wicki.org.uk/ is not available any more.
Would it be possible to host that thummer flash app in altkeyboards?

Regarding notation and music theory theres an argentinian guy called Sergio Aschero who has been working for years on the subject of a new scientifical musical notation. His work is only in spanish but it is worth checking out: http://ascheropus.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.scribd.com/Sergio%20Aschero
It is very disorganized but it is mindblowing. I've only found one document in english, it's a little teaser and not very well translated. http://ascheropus.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/ascheros-numberphony.html
The reason i am mentioning this is because he assigns a colour to each note (including accidentals) just like you did, only different colours.

[Ernest Olsen]

I have spent the last 1/2 hour trying to figure out how to contact you again. Where are the days of simple e-mails.

That vented.

I would like to thank you for guiding me through my purchase of my Axis 49, even though it did have problems. I love it.

Since then I have also bought a Korg Microkey and I am currenntly lusting after a Roland ax-09 shoulder Synth.

As a returning favor, I would like to give you a grand stanza sheet that I created with Autocad as a PDF file that can maybe help beginning musicians like me. I think it addresses all the complaints that I have with staffs. How do I send you the PDF file so that if you think it is a worthwhile contribution for us neophytes you can post it.

Do you have a face page, if so could you friend me.

ernest@maui.net

[Leonardo]

Hi Ken Im an Axis user and just want to share this link with you and your bloggers, finally someone did it: http://soundbuilders.lvl1.org/discussion/20/project-ax15-64-the-axis-64-clone/p1

cheers!

[MusicScienceGuy]

I have moved to Typepad from Vox.com. Many links do not work well - they take you to my TypePad home page, instead of the proper subject.

I've been moving to a full, properly desisgned website at http://sites.google.com/site/altkeyboards/ this website is a much better source of information on all things involving innovative instruments.