MusicScienceGuy

Jammer vs Piano - part 4 - Piano Lessons

A good course to teach a complex skill

Douglas College in Greater Vancouver has very interesting piano lesson classes. They are aimed at musicians that already have musical experience in high school., such as guitar and woodwinds. I found my modest experience in playing the jammer invaluable; without this practice, I would have been most truly sunk.

 We launched into basic simple 4-fingered  (tetrachord) patterns covering an octave and quickly expanded to 5 fingers on each hand. More complex fingering techniques were brought in. and more and more keys and scales were introduced. Eventually, we worked up to playing "exotic" minor keys and arpeggios, some of which involved "very weird fingerings", in the words of our teacher Barry.

Learn, Embellish, Repeat

One basic teaching technique was "learn, embellish"; "learn, embellish more": We would learn a simple technique, like playing a major scale in C, then learn all the simple variants: F and G (one note change),  then to play in the left hand, then learn D and Bb (two notes change), etc. By the end, we were playing with scales starting in keys with black notes, which requires a different set of fingers and thumb.  The net effect of "learn, embellish" was a big reduction in learning time and lots of repetition of basic finger movements. My ears also got a strong workout, as I had to hold a firm image in my head of the notes of the scale and check that the notes pressed matched the image. 

It is often mentioned by jammer advocates that "the piano has 24 fingerings" (implying that it takes 24 times much practice to learn as). But, as taught at the college, the piano student really learns 3 or so basic fingerings with 8 variations. The left-hand does pick up a bit of skill transfer from the right hand (nothing like the heavy skill transfer when learning the jammer). The net effect is that the piano only requires, to be proficient in all keys, I guesstimate 3-5 times the practicing that the jammer would require. 

But note, however, the term "proficient in all keys" above. The student at this point, madly learning to play, can skimp on the proficiency. Learning to play well in 5 keys, play OK 4 keys, and poorly in the 3 remaining is reasonable, and what the teacher accepted.

Curiously, the "learn, embellish; learn, embellish more" technique is very similar to the "deep practice" Daniel Coyle and others advocate. Training situations where one is at the edge of ability, making a controlled number of mistakes - and correcting them immediately – is an  excellent way to practice. 

And also note that the practice is training both the fingers and the ear. The intense ear training has implications discussed in the next article: Jammer vs Piano - part 5 - Expecting the unexpected.

An excellent textbook

The course textbook (Contemporary Class Piano ) was scarily massive and excellent. The teacher, Barry Barrington, himself a virtuoso pianist, selected small, relevant sections of the text to master, and gave us students a broad choice of pieces to learn.

Was anything missing?

An overview might have been nice.

There were some "overview" topics that I expected to present in this university-level course:

• Background on the musical layout of the piano: notes have what musical effect, how long they sustain  
• Where the percussion section starts,
• Where the optimum chordal section is,
• What parts are best suited to create a desired musical effect?

 These concepts and more have been around for years: see "How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home" by Ward Cannel & Fred Marx. Mind you, it can be well argued that the student, over the course of the next 8 plus years practicing the piano, will figure out and/or absorb unconsciously much of  the above points, without needing to be taught.

Am I just supposed to "know" how to learn the piano because I learned to play the sax?

A considerable body of solid experimental evidence has been built up in the last 2 decades about how to effectively practice and learn. I was modestly surprised that nothing was mentioned about effective practicing.  Barry showed a cute video that urged practicing rather than dilly-dallying.  little was said about how to best learn; no review of practice and learning techniques.

For a good overview of what I mean, see: Daniel Coyles' The-talent-code, and Book review: Geoff Colvins' Talent is Overrated. Note: in the college's defense, that the class did, I think, use Coyles techniques with it's "Learn, Embellish, Repeat" system mentioned above. I just suggest making them conscious. 

Learning modern practice techniques is (in my opinion) extremely important: Research has found it not just a matter of practice amount, it's a matter of practice quality. The college program provided the expert coaching, but did not show us how to slow it down, how much to focus on the accuracy vs speed, and techniques for breaking it into manageable, learn-able chunks, this was left to the student.

 Subtle Links between the score and the piano

If one only plays the piano, the subtle, but very deep connection between the traditional Music notation and the standard keyboard layout is not obvious. It just is a designed fact.  It's everywhere; place your fingers here, and sharpen or flatten (shift the finger left or right a centimeter) the notes per the key you are in, ét viola! the right interval, the correct major or minor third, the correct complex chord  magically appears. I expect that this would become automatic and very fast, provided one is young. When one is 65, perhaps not so much. I'm getting a glimmer of this automation but it's slow in growing.

 Subtler Yet Links between the piano and my brain's perception of pitch

 I am bemused often by an everyday skill everyone has. I consider it one of the most astonishing feats of computation in the world. People pick up a smart phone and start texting. Typing away with either thumb, both  thumbs. Just doing it.

This generates the question: anyone older than 35 learned to "touch-type" on a full keyboard with really, moving key, using all fingers, so how do they automatically know how to type on a dinky little screen with one and/or two thumbs?

The answer, of course, is the that the brain is astonishingly good at creating good, flexible mental background image. In the texting case mentioned, the mind maps the learned image to the current image size and guides the fingers to targets in that image. Computationally, this is a greater feat than doing a hand-spring.  Backwards.

Playing a piano requires a similar mental feat. Ponder the dynamic "musical image" a pianist must have. The ear is hearing just 88 notes evenly spaced in pitch, a semi-tone apart. Yet when playing the hands are in different relative places on the keyboard, continually moving around  in 3 dimensions, the fingers shifting to sharpen or flatten a note as needed. That must be one heck of a image! The brain of the poor pianist is forced to do an awful lot of work. Those target, semi-tone-spaced notes must be very clearly marked and understood by the brain. 

The jammer and any other isomorphic (evenly spaced notes), instrument does not make the mind do the same amount of work.The hands generally stay in one place, or move in simple ways.

Does this make a practical difference?  In my very preliminary experience, it does. Occasionally in the last few months of playing the piano, I've had flashes of the "exact" note placement in my choral music. When I do, my wife (she of perfect pitch) reports that my pitch accuracy takes a big jump.

Could it be that intensely playing the piano for 8 months could do what 6 years of playing the jammer less intensely did not do? This must be investigated.

Summary:

I have spent 8 months learning the piano, with modest success: I passed the course, but can't play the piano, and the pieces I learned, well. 

I did learn :

1. To play the same pieces on both the jammer and the piano, so that I can compare the two instruments.
   (Note: I am a musical klutz, but I'll be the same musical klutz on both devices)  
2. As suspected, it was way easier to read a score and play a piano than to read a score and play a jammer.
3. Learning to play the piano may have trained my ear more than playing the jammer did.
4. Lots of basics about how piano teachers simplify the learning of the instrument, by starting in the simplest techniques and gradually adding on complications.

As a unexpected side-effect (the course syllabus did not mention) My musical sense of pitch improved significantly. 

Jammer vs Piano - part 1: Comparing musical instruments; modern to age-old

New instruments illuminate music theory

Do you want to gain a fresh insight into musical instrument design and music theory? Do you build or use 21st-century musical instruments? If so, this series of articles is for you.

First, a disclaimer; "Jammer vs Piano" is a catchy phrase, but both instruments have merit; both challenge and reward the player. The jammer keyboard in no way diminishes the piano keyboard; this is a daughter/mother relationship.  However, as a good Daughter should, I believe the jammer sheds light on some of the quirks of her Mother, the piano, and shows the incredible talent of pianists and organists.

With these postings, I hope to show tres-cool and unexpected things about new alternative musical instruments. The intent is to save you, fellow musician and instrument builder, a significant amount of fiddle, trouble and frustration. To let you what you are getting into, to progress more quickly, and avoid wandering blind alleys.  

What I want to share with you

• First, I’ve developed and extensively tested a music-theory based alternative musical keyboard called a jammer, and worked out how to play it. The prototype plays well, with an ergonomic fingering system.  Pieces in major keys have nearly all fast, easy fingerings, while minor pieces have a bit more challenging movements. Even ragtime, with many semi-tone jumps and chromatic scales, is playable.
  
  
• Second, most new musical keyboard designs use a consistent-interval (isomorphic) note and key pattern, making the new instrument easier to learn. However, a consistent pattern breaks some centuries-old unconscious musical assumptions. This, in turn, causes unexpected challenges, but ones we hope to work around and document for posterity. See: Part 5: Expecting the Unexpected
  
  
• Third, I am learning both the piano and jammer keyboards and taking notes comparing the two. I am working out simple ways to measure their relative play-ability, discovering what specific skills an alternative instrument player needs. Alas, I have near-zero musical talent so can’t directly demonstrate the differences between the two instruments by playing them.
  
  
• Fourth, I hope to use the results of step three, to create lessons focusing on crucial musical skills for the new instrument, creating training to teach the key areas where a novice needs help. These include proper jammer fingering of scales, arpeggios and chord progressions, reading the score, ear training via the new instrument, advice on what to focus on, and what traditions to ignore.

Please give feedback.

More to Come

__________________________________________

For more information, see these "Jammer vs Piano" articles:

Next: part 1B: What is a Jammer; highlights & discoveries

 Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

A Gentleman Craftsman: Roger Linn and his LinnStrument

Where the future's instruments are designed (image courtesy Google Maps)

A new Craftsman of Musical instruments

If I was to visit a luthier, I have a preconception of the encounter; I would expect comfortable rooms and spaces with white plaster and the outside whitewashed and a garden of olive trees. Uber-Luthier Roger Linn certainly did not disappoint; both in dwelling*, and in himself; he is both a gentleman and master crofter of new instruments. Be clear, Roger does not build exotic musical toys: his products are aimed at giving professionals and high-level amateurs more ways to express themselves.  

* The trees weren’t olives, but they were close enough.

Last April (yes, yes, I know; I am dreadfully tardy in posting this) my wife and I were in the Bay Area and presumed upon this busy man in asking for a visit and demonstration of his new instrument, the LinnStrument. Following are my thoughts, as a serious part-time music student and instrument maker, for what they are worth.

First:  this is a wonderful instrument. It's the best on the market, both considering the low US$1500 price tag, and the instrument’s musical flexibility, expressiveness and built-in craftsmanship. The term "craftsmanship" is usually applied to hand-made instruments, but believe me, designing a musical interface takes great care; the devil truly is in the interacting details and seemingly endless, endless refinements required. Five dimensions of expression, three more than a piano allows, are not easy to enable.

For proof, here are some demos of the LinnStrument. In particular, see Stephen Barnard’s "Wee Small Hours"

Second, MPE (Midi Polyphonic Expression) is finally maturing (I gather Roger had a hand in this process). The MPE extension to the now ancient MIDI standard worked well: the polyphonic synth sounds I heard were clean, vivid and lacked noticeable latency. Just as important, the synths seemed to be easy to set up, and run.

Third: this new instrument is about as good as can be created with current technology. Roger spent considerable time explaining the LinnStrument to my wife and myself, and I had the chance to experiment with his instrument, focusing on its ergonomics, finger placement and its differences from the instruments I know. He knew of, and obviously understood well, the jammer keyboard layout I favor. Roger gave succinct reasons why the LinnStrument could not easily use the jammer layout. His "LinStrument" layout spreads out whole tones to enable glissando and pitch-bends. The jammer layout squeezes the semi-tones off t0 the sides, and puts the most used notes under the fingers, enabling greater fingering speed.

Fourth, the LinnStrument is an excellent keyboard for Bass and guitar players.
One favoured layout for the LinnStrument is Fourths String; ascending fourths along the y-axis and ascending semitones on the x-axis. This matches the layout of guitars and many other stringed instruments. Unsurprisingly, guitar-playing the reviewers and early adopters report the LinnStrument is easy for them to pick up.

Fifth, the same may not be true for some pianists for 2 big reasons:

• Adding other dimensions to movement, especially vertical movement, may be quite a challenge
  
  
• Over the last half-year I’ve been learning the piano, and I’ve spent three years learning an alternative, the jammer keyboard. I found the traditional musical score spoon-feeds finger placement to pianists to an amazing degree. If a pianist relies on automatic transcription (and many do), switching to a LinnStrument will be tough indeed.
  
  However, other pianists “play by ear”; they read a score, and translate the score to mental musical notes and chords. For them, I expect the LinnStrument will be easy to learn.

Sixth, I am frankly surprised that the instrument has not gotten a lot more buzz: all the reviews I’ve seen are positive, if not laudatory. The instrument is easy to use, is getting more so as the software is tweaked; it gives access unique expressiveness and allows good musician to diversify, to become a good-or-better player of many instruments, and it’s not expensive (only $1500), less than a decent guitar or Yamaha keyboard.

Patience may be needed here, although a good 1,400 units have been sold to date, implying sales of $2.1 million, a quite decent level for a new instrument sold solely by word-of-mouth and magazine reviews. This level of sales also implies that the LinnStrument is a commercial success and will be available for years.

My Last Note

 If you are looking to diversify beyond the musical mainstream, and especially to get ahead and distinguish yourself from the musical competition, the LinnStrument is the instrument I recommend. It’s open-ended, flexible and undergoing continual innovation, easy to use, expressive and sounds good.

Also, it will give you new, fresh views of music and you will have fun with it**.  ‘Nuff Said

Ken Rushton

** speaking from personal experience with the jammer keyboard.

 ____________________
Notes:

• Good support has been reported by early adopters
• The LinnStrument does not make sounds on its own
• it hard to see this as a concern when an iPad or one’s cellphone can be a better synth than the best one could buy 10 years ago
• Not available yet, but only a matter of time, is Midi MPE apps for smartphones

• The LinnStrument gives you multiple and much better / intuitive “views” of music theory than a standard keyboard – very handy in composition
  
  
• My fingers could adapt from the “jammer layout” to the LinnStrument
  
  

• A sample of reviews (I've yet to see a negative review) of the LinnStrument:

• Why Is It So Hard for New Musical Instruments to Catch On? William Weir Feb 7, 2012, The Atlantic. The reviewer calls LinnStrument “one of the best”
  
  
• Jordan Rudess on Alternate Instruments; Keyboard Magazine: Stephen Fortner/Jordan Rudess· May 26, 2015 The LinnStrument is Rudess’ favorite
  
  
• Read this tribute to the LinnDrums by Todd Rundgren, that Roger received when getting a Technical Grammy Award in 2011: “My first LinnDrum fascinated and frightened me…”

 

A responsive keyboard: getting 2 millisecond latency

It is finally possible to get a near-zero latency keyboard on a PC! It's most excellent to have.

However, some tweaking is needed to get a stable, effective system; you have to do more than plug in a new sound card. Herein I give you what worked for me, so you can hopefully get what you want quickly, avoid a fair bit of fiddling, and most important, never get that uncontrollable urge to throw your computer out the window.

A little background

To put things in context: my old setup was OK: I had a decent, but old sound card - a Creative Labs' Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium HD “Audiophile Sound Card”. It has a in-house Creative Labs' ASIO driver. which gave me, it said, about 20 ms latency - noticeable at first touch, but consistent and I could live with it; I knew of nothing better in a windows platform. I had tried the on-board sound with the ASIO4 ALL driver, which gave me the same or greater latency.

However, the X-FI card and/or the Creative Labs driver started to give me grief - it would freeze my computer at random times - being intermittent it took a long time to track down. Likely the card / firmware was too old for Windows 7 or had an intermittent hardware glitch.

Looking over the rather scarce options - there aren't many sound cards out there these days - I saw the Sound Blaster Zx for $125 Cdn, advertising "one millisecond latency".

First, does my setup like it?

First, Windows and the SB ASIO driver seem to work together well: 

 

My venerable copy of DPC Latency checker v1.2.0 reports a latency peak of .170 milliseconds; i gather that this means my desktop Windows is well behaved and meshes well with the hardware. 

The numbers look good

The card meshes well with my Kontakt 5 player, which estimates a 2.0 ms latency.

 

Also the card has 5.1 outputs, and a nice clean sound.  It was easy to set up, with one important tip: clean out all of your old SoundBlaster driver's and software first. I didn't because some of the old software packages were useful. Big mistake, that.  ;)

Blow me down - The SB Zx does work

It makes my jammer keyboards very nicely responsive: press key; instant sound. 

 

... but you need two sound outputs

Per instructions from the SoundBlaster manual, I tried to use the single SB sound card, by disabling the on-board sound. But Windows error messages began popping up.  for everything. Kontakt 5 & Sound Blaster's ASIO driver apparently grab exclusive use of the audio card (think of it; this makes sense if microsecond response is to happen).

Windows messages, system sounds and internet browser messaged simply could not get a sound in edgewise with this cozy couple.  The attempting routines would eventually give up, issue an error message or just plain freeze up.

My solution: keep the old motherboard based sound system going, and plug a small pair of stereo speakers into the motherboard. Windows and the others seem to actively prefer sending messages to the on-board sound card.  If one does not have a pair of extra speakers handy, I imagine that you could combine the outputs from the 2 sound systems with a Y-jack. 

Now, how can I do the same to my laptop? 

Alas, now my portable jammer's laptop 20 ms latency is much more evident. Fixing this is problematic - USB is designed for high throughput, not quick response.  

Please let me know, dear reader, if you have a solution. 

 

I hope this helps.

Ken.

               first posted March 1                                         Updated March 29

Dualo du-touch: outside in

To make an instrument ...

The late Carl Sagan once said "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe" (link).

Well, creating an new instrument is not quite so complex, but there is still one heck of a lot to do. I'm sure the team that developed (and is still developing) this instrument must feel that they are indeed inventing the world.

Lets start with the outside of the Dualo, then in the following postings, take a glance inside and then look at the hidden work needed to create the du-touch.

 

 

Thinking outside: the box 

The first thing I noticed was the well-designed box: this was not just a simple picture on cardboard, with a bunch of foam pellets for cushioning. 

Everything was organized and neat, like opening an iPhone box on a larger scale.

Someone put this complex package together by hand, perhaps by a volunteer: I thank you, mon ami.

My serial number hints that this is the 24th output of the current assembly line.

 

A gourmet box

I'm reminded of a gourmet meal, such a meal that doesn't just have to taste good, it also has to appear to be a work of art.

 

How soup is served in Vancouver these days  ==>

 

 

 

So is this is the 21st-century reality for new instrument creation?

Does it not only have to sound good and play well? 

Does it need gourmet packaging, even though this is irrelevant to function (and looked at only for perhaps 2 minutes), while the new owner uncovers his/her purchase. 

I wonder how much this lovely package cost to design, and how many people it took. to create it.

 

 

At least the power supply is easy ...

So the Dualo developers apparently felt their instrument had to be designed and packaged to sell well in boutique stores.

What else does it need? Well it would be nice if it can work anywhere on the planet, regardless of the local electricity supply quirks.

This has become vastly easier with the emergence of the USB standard for devices. This is a wonder full innovation from our point of view, allowing a great increase in the number of easily available potential customers.

But the regulators require you dance with them ...

But you still have to pay the local authorities their economic rent : for example, the US Federal Communcations Commision requires the Dualo be certified (again) even though it was tested to identical standards for the EU. I suspect the FCC's primary motive is to collect its fees.

And that's just the beginning

Daunting requirements, mounting expenses, and that's just the box the thing is delivered in.

Next we'll look at the inside of the Dualo.

 

Related articles

 

Starting an Greater Vancouver Alternate Musical Instrument SIG

The Dualo du-touch has arrived

My Christmas present arrived today, courtesy of my very understanding wife.  It's a Dualo du-touch, made in Fr ance and invented by an group of young enthusiasts. Price: about $1000 and change in Canadian loonies.  Duty and taxes added a bit over 20% to that. 

  Big caveat: anything I say about the Dualo people is impressions gathered by reading their websites and facebook postings and will not be 100% accurate.   

This is the second round of Dualo production: the first, in August & September, was almost late-stage prototypes. This batch, I gather, is a much more stable product, although they are still getting up to speed on side issues like English manuals.

Now, to get to the central question that my many blog readers (all three of you)  are asking: what gives;  have you given up on the jammer keyboard?

By no means; I'm just starting to do well on the jammer (and more on that shortly). I bought a Dualo because it has many "must-have" features for any practical portable 21st-century instrument, and I need to see how they are implemented so I can the design the next-generation jammer. I am not disappointed, the Dualo has solid features.

My wife has her own motives. She wants me to have an instrument that is not tied to a computer,  trains my ear, can be taken to parties, and does not lock me into a single instrumental view of music.

First impressions

Here on the west coast of Canada, we are swamped by devices made in Asian countries. they tend to have a standard, shiny "plastic-y" look and feel. It's nice to have in my hands a device that has a nice heft and feel; the texture is that of high-quality rubber/powder material; it's not slippery. 

The buttons are ... interesting ... They don't move like the keys of my Axis-49, instead they are rubbery and move by less than .5mm. Yet they have velocity sensitivity. My best guess is that they sense the shock-wave of the impacting finger, perhaps with tiny accelerometers? I'll reserve judgment pending some solid practice sessions.

The controls seem, at first touch, complicated but are starting to make sense.  The reality of holding the instrument and actually getting an audible response from it is very vivid; much more "real" than expected.

 

My fingers and mind are reeling

However, now I know exactly now an old-time pianist feels when I show him my jammer keyboard and gush that it's bigger than the invention of the grand piano.

After months and months of playing music on the jammer, and learning its particular "layout of music" deeply in my fingers and brain, it's a heavy shock to encounter a different layout. My fingers are having tough time even playing "Mary had a little lamb", and my brain - not too strong at the best of times - is reeling.

 

Shock! - someone actually was influenced by this blog ...

I recently e-conversed, with Bruno, one of the co-inventors of the Dualo, and he floored me with:

Many many thanks for your email. I know your blog and your website, and you were one of the first we saw on internet when we started to build the company. That was for us a source of motivation as we though that this is a proof of the existence of a community (and a market) for new layout.

Well knock me over with a feather. I'm glad that I was of help in deciding to get the Dualo into production. :)

Ken.

 

 

Starting an Greater Vancouver Alternate Musical Instrument SIG

Does the layout of the traditional, “piano” keyboard strike you as weird?
Do you want an advantage over other musicians and look really cool?

I’m starting an Alternate Musical Instrument Special Interest Group (sounds cooler than "Club") in the Greater Vancouver area. Do you:

- really, hugely want to learn an instrument, but don’t because the instrument looks arcane or you’ll be compared to musicians that started years ago
- are non-keyboard musicians: especially guitar players and sax players that want to play a keyboard but don’t because the keyboard is so bloody confusing
- are mediocre keyboardists that want a killer advantage: an instrument that is much faster to play and has many more musical possibilities than the traditional instrument
- are composers that want composition-boosting (instead of confusing) instruments

This is a truly great time in the development of musical instruments. New, intelligently designed ones are coming out; we now have the Daskin (a modernized piano), Dualo Du-touch, Terpstra, LinnStrument and jammer keyboards. All of these are designed to be both easy to learn, fast to play and train the ear accurately.  This is not hard - traditional instruments are not designed for any of these things. All of the new instruments have uniform, consistent fingering, that is, if you learn to play a song in a given key, you can play it equally well in all keys, and modulations are easy. Each has unique features.

If these new instruments sound scary-hard to learn, there is now available teaching software that multiplies musical learning speed  -and- it works particularly well on the new gadgets.

The group purpose: to check-out  these new instruments,  share ideas and experiences and hopefully gain extra proficiency in music. 

If you are interested, please send an email to [email protected] or drop a comment  here.

Farewell to the AXiS Keyboards

In two months a pair of unique, innovative instruments will cease being sold.
This is the story of how they did not shake up the musical world, but should have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why are they interesting?

A handful of years ago two special musical devices; the AXiS-64 and the AXiS-49 midi controllers came out. These keyboards use small, finger-tip sized keys arrayed-two-dimensionally. While a few simular expensive 2-dimensional keyboards were available from boutique manufacturers, the Axis line had several critical features; good velocity sensitivity, an affordable price and an easily learned (compared to the guitar and piano) interface.  I checked out their innards and found a good solid design. 

They are endorsed by a number of prominent musicians, notably Jordan Rudess, who praises especially their Harmonic-Table key layout. This layout gives the instruments these key properties:

• Every chord and musical progression uses the same fingerings, the same shape, regardless of the musical key being played
• All the common chords are playable with the same simple fingerings: most common chords (major triads, minor triads, 7^th, 9^th and 11^th chords can be played with half or one-third the fingers needed on any other instrument.
• The simple, elegant geometry of the layout lends itself to composing music.

Non-musicians think melody is the important part of music because melody is linked to words. Here's a secret that musicians absorb into their pores as they learn their craft (and don't talk about because it is so obvious to them, anymore than one would say "Yep, all music is founded on rythym."): all popular music is founded on progressions of chords, providing the foundation for the melody notes to dance on.

In other words, instruments incorporating the harmonic table are like exceptionally simple guitars; easy to get started on simple chords, easy to progress to funkier chords, and easy to compose on. This simplicity does not make them any less an instrument at all. Here's a couple of demos:

 

  

It's a nice little product line: a simple, affordable bare-bones instrument, the AXiS-49, for musicians to try out, and a fully-featured instrument, the AXiS-64 to progress to if one liked the '49. And if you really like the '64 you can order a unique, hand-crafted Opal version from luthier Peter Davies; I believe Brian May has one.

Cheops law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget

Now there is just one little hitch: “elegant simplicity” can be a hard new sell, especially online. Sometimes “old-but-works-eventually” or “cheap flash” can sell better, especially in hard times.

Unfortunately, development of the keyboards had taken longer than planned, and they came out precisely at the start of the Great Recession. The Axis’ did not sell as well as expected.

Also, development had cost more than planned, leaving no reserve for firmware fine-tuning and advertising.  Critically from my viewpoint, the AXiS-49 initially was not adaptable enough to fully use the instrument for other kinds of alternate-instrument, like the jammers I desperately wanted to make.

I and others worked with C-Thru and encouraged them to upgrade the AXiS-49’s firmware in 2011, allowing the unit to be adapted into versatile alternate-keyboard instruments.

I love my jammer keyboards made from pairs of AXiS-49’s. Serendipitously, our Axis-based jammers turned out were more powerful and versatile than ones I had tried to make by hand.

But unfortunately, C-Thru Music has struggled, and its “virtual storefront” will soon close. I asked Andrew Llewellyn and Jacqueline Kandalaft-Gomez, of C-Thru Music to give us some of their experiences and advice to post for posterity. Perhaps the next brave developer will benefit.

 Ken Rushton

In their words - Andrew Llewellyn and Jacqueline Kandalaft-Gomez, of C-Thru Music

 In 2007 C-Thru Music came out with their AXiS-64 MIDI controller, followed by the smaller AXiS-49 in early 2009.   These controllers have velocity-sensitive keys arrayed in a 2-dimensional array.  

Both Axis’ keys were not large like the standard musical keyboard, almost exactly the size of a standard computer keyboard. By default the pitches on the keys were arranged in the innovative Harmonic Table layout, allowing one or two fingers to play most of the chords used in pop and jazz music.

Andrew Llewellyn (C-Thru Music) developed the AXiS-64 with Peter Davies, the inventor of the Harmonic Table.  AXiS-64 technology (keys and rubber switches) was used to develop the smaller AXiS-49.

Peter Davies is a skilled luthier; building and repairing guitars.  Andrew Llewellyn has a background as a sound recording engineer and co-producer, and plays the regular piano keyboard. Although not a musician, Jacqueline loves music and is the organizational glue who holds C-Thru Music together.

None has an investment background.

A point to note
Everybody at the time told us how important a patent was.
In hindsight it was a complete waste of money. 

Q: What made you invest in this?

Initially, we loved the product once we'd made a decent prototype.  Established musical instrument producers weren't interested and thought volumes would be too low.  

We also knew that alternative MIDI controllers had a history of failing.  We found that when people tried it both beginners and professionals loved it.  We also knew that with notable exceptions amongst the pro's it isn't nearly as interesting off paper or a screen as it is when you touch an instrument for yourself and hear what it does.  Our aim was to make the first instrument very hard wearing and high quality, and for sales to come primarily from word of mouth.  

The rationale for investing in the '49 was different.  At the price of the AXiS-64 we were not going to be able to hit a wider audience.  Best advice at the time was we needed to hit a price point of $500 to do that.  Using R&D from the '64 we could do that, and our market research pointed to our being able to make it into a workable little business. 

Q: It is said creating any new personal-interaction device is a nail-bitingly hard, frustrating, Sisyphean process. Do you agree?

It really does seem like it much of the time.  R&D is scientific, but there is an art to it.  To keep costs down, we of course tried wherever possible to use off-the-shelf parts.  The trouble was that so much needed to be custom made.  In particular key shape and key travel were vital.  Everyone is different, yet you must make the device useable by anyone.  You have to manage time and money, and balance perfection with pragmatism.  

It's like finishing an album or a painting.  Should you just add that final overdub, or just touch up some final areas on the canvas? - when will you be ready to print the final mix-down or put the painting in a frame and sell it?  At some point you have to go with what you have and take the plunge. Everything takes longer than you think when developing and producing a new product. Even when you think you have allowed extra time than you think something will take…. it always takes longer, there are always things that you can’t possibly think of simply because you don’t know For example, Chinese New Year - when they down tools for a week…. so if you had ordered plastic parts that are crucial to making your current batch of orders, instead you come to a grinding halt!  

 

Q: Which gremlins in particular did you encounter in creating your instrument? 

There were many gremlins in making our pitch bend and mod wheels.  At the time there was no source for buying these off the shelf in small quantities.

We had to start from scratch and design our own.  Getting the right-shaped and correct-strength springs involved much trial and error.  Spring making is a black art.  The other notable headache was the switches and how they contact the PCB.  There are nanoseconds of bounce and the contacts can easily be ruined by dust and dirt if any gets on the board.

Q: Given hindsight, is there any way to avoid them? 

I believe that these days one can buy pitch/mod wheels from stock - although I haven't looked.  Ensuring quality carbon contacts on the rubber switches, and using gold-plate on the circuit board sorted out connection problems.

More important than particular gremlins is making sure you have good suppliers.  If you have knowledgeable and helpful people on your team then you'll be able to get around problems as they arise.  

Q: What did you do right? 

My first answer would be that we concentrated on quality.  We didn't need to produce an all-singing all-dancing product from day one, but we did want to make sure that what we produced worked and worked well, and was upgradable.

I think the key shape and travel worked out well.  There are so many things that could have been a little different E.g. longer key travel makes for better velocity control but makes it much harder to glide between notes, and larger keys are better for larger hands.  We put a lot of time into the key shape and how they work and I think we got a really good balance.

The second notable decision was to get Kevin Lamb to re-design the firmware for the '64.  I can't praise Kevin highly enough.  He has an encyclopedic musical knowledge and he used it to transform the capabilities of the AXiS-64.  The latest version has been stable for ages and is light-years ahead of our original offering.  The '64 is now an incredibly versatile tool.  

Q: It looks like you miss-timed the market, and if your musical instrument had hit the market before the crisis you would have done well/better.

Re the timing for the AXiS-49.  It couldn't have been worse.  In the summer of 2008 we were putting final design touches to the AXiS-49 and thought it wise to do some pre-marketing.  By late summer we had around 500 people who wanted a '49 at a price of $500.

We thought we could rely on a significant portion of these sales since we specified a price.  So at that time it seemed quite reasonable to organize for a stock of 1,000 units.  Buying less than a thousand would make them too expensive, and 2,000 would have been better for unit cost, but we thought we should be cautious.  By the end of the year the so-called "credit crunch" hit, and we launched in January. We didn't imagine that of 500 people who wanted to buy at $500 only 30 would buy at launch time.  

If we had launched earlier I think we would have done better initially, however products such as the '49 rely on a healthy middle class who have disposable income.  This is exactly the sort of people who have been most affected by the current economic environment.  

Also, from the time we did our market research and actually having product to sell, the $500 suddenly seemed too expensive, and people wanted to pay less - there were several other products designed by the big companies like Roland, Casio etc which had sounds, lights, colored keys etc for half the price of ours -if people were going to splash out a couple of hundred dollars, they were going to do it on something that had more functions and features to justify spending during the credit crunch. 

 

 Q: You did very little marketing, counting instead on word-of-mouth, click-of-mouse and influential musicians to get the word out. Would more marketing have helped?

Possibly, however budget was a major constraint.  Marketing budget and further R&D had to come from sales.

As selling off the page has always seemed more difficult than from a live demo, we also looked at distribution through retailers.  However this route to market has its additional costs and didn't prove viable either.  Over the last year we've had 152,000 visits according to our web stats,

However we obviously don't sell well off the site as we are still (2014) selling from our original batch of 1,000 units.  It may be that more marketing would have driven more people to our site, but this alone would not have made the difference on volume of sales.  Perhaps better PR and seeing artists using the instrument front of stage would have helped, but front-of-stage is not necessarily the home of keyboards.

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Although we’re closing, we can be proud that we've ended up with so many very happy customers. People have so often written to let us know how great our products are - and after all, that's why we're in business (or would be).  

It is also unfortunate that laws rules and regulations make it very difficult for micro companies to survive.  There are so many costs associated with red tape especially related to government and banks, that small often isn't viable. 

 

Just so that everybody knows, when we close C-Thru Music Limited we will keep the website going and retain sufficient parts and spares to be able to continue to guarantee all our products for the usual one year.  Support ends 31st Jan 2016.

The LinnStrument controller is out

Will this instrument overturn instrument design?

I have no association with Roger Linn, but I do feel that his intelligently designed instrument is going to shake up the musical world. It should allow for way greater expressiveness than a regular keyboard. 

Roger Linn Design - LinnStrument  

Roger says "A revolutionary expressive musical perfomance controller. In short, LinnStrument is an expressive alternative to the MIDI keyboard controller."

I'll keep you posted on reviews. Ken.

Related articles

Roger Linn LinnStrument Now Available In Limited Quantities

The Linnstrument from Roger Linn Design...the holy grail of expressive controllers?

Symmetrical keyboards - a crazy idea

Two symmetrical keyboards, one for each hand - an novel idea, but it works well

One of the strangest (initially) concepts of jammer keyboards is symmetry; the mirroring of motion between the two hands. This really made my eye-brows lift when I looked at Jim Plamondon’s first demos of his two-keyboard Thummer.

Jim Plamondon's "Thummer" keyboard prototype

And I’ll bet that that nearly everyone has the same thought:  

What a weird | interesting | bizarre | novel idea – wonder how it works out in practice?

Consider the standard music keyboard, which is profoundly asymmetrical. Seldom will the same fingers be used, and because the thumb has a different reach, the hand movement  and location must vary as well. This is a huge amount to learn.

Can symmetry give alternate keyboard players any help?

 Experimental results

Play the same notes with the same fingers

After learning several hundred keyboard exercises on the symmetrical 2-keyboard jammer, I'm confident that this design has numerous advantages. In rough descending order of significance, these are:

Only one keyboard “fingering set” needs to be worked out and learned, a huge reduction from the two sets otherwise required, one for each hand, on non-symmetrical keyboards. (*1)

Keyboarding skills transfer between hands playing symmetrical keyboards. To be specific, note-playing and timing skills transfer. In other words, one hand automatically teaches the other what to do, to a significant degree. (*3)

Parallel Octaves are super easy. There are many occasions in music where the hands play the same notes, an octave or two apart. This is trivial to learn and easy to play on the two-keyboard jammer; nearly zero effort. Not so much on the traditional keyboard.

Fingers do not collide. It is easy to play close harmony and contrapuntal motion with two keyboards.

The same notes can be doubled, giving a unique, subtle richness to the resulting note. This cannot be done on the traditional keyboard.

[Note: this is not to say that there are no little surprises. In the following posting I'll talk about these and give tested tips.]

Which skills transfer?

Some simple experiments (*3) established that (for this writer at least) skill transfer between hands on the two-keyboard jammer is about 66%, in close agreement with the scientific literature (*2). (see notes at the end of this posting).

 This applies to both the temporary skill one gains in an hour’s practice and to long-term, hard-wired movements, the skill developed over weeks of practice

To a first approximation, keyboard skills transferred equally well both ways, from right to left and vice-versa, as some of the recent scientific literature reports.

Do any skills not transfer?

Not everything transfers. Key basic motor skills , e.g. pressing keys fast, precisely locating them, and moving between keys, must first be learned by each hand. Thus you don’t get much of a boost at the beginning.

Why hasn't keyboard symmetry been tried before?

I think it’s just chance. Of old, the major hand skill was hand-writing, which is inherently asymmetrical.  Writing “dog” with the other hand requires different hand movements and timing, or else you get “qob”.  In other words, the other hand can’t help the writing hand.

In many tasks, symmetry is either not useful or blindingly obvious and done automatically. Keyboards are a special case, and it took the insight of Jim Plamondon to figure this out.

Clumsiness transfers too ...

Interestingly, I found, especially at first, a distinct flavor of “clumsiness transfer” as well as “skill transfer”. For example, if my right hand learned, the theme for “Chariots of Fire”, then trying to play it with the left hand would be reasonably successful, but some notes would be missed.

Now here’s something a bit interesting: when I went back to playing with the right hand, it then made the same mistakes the left hand had just made. In hindsight, this makes sense. Apparently “un-skills” could travel from the hand to hand just as easily as a skill could travel the other way.

To a psychologist, this would be a worthy research subject in its own right. However interesting this might be, this is an unwanted side effect. Fortunately, I found “clumsiness transfer” faded with time, with no conscious effort on my part; presumably my sub-conscious learned to transfer the preferred way.

Taking advantage of skill transfer to boost both hands to equal proficiency

Is one hand teaching the other really that useful? When would you ever play any song with the less proficient hand? Why learn to play a poorer version of say Hanon Exercises or Happy Birthday that you will never use?

Furthermore, it’s also pretty boring to work yet more on a piece or an exercise that you  (not to mention your housemates) are likely very, very tired of.

But consider the long term: the same snippets, the same note patterns will surely come up again and again. I suggest practicing with the less proficient hand patterns and songs that are generic. With modest additional effort, you can be ready to nail those patterns when they pop up under  either hand.

The next posting adddresses how to use symmetry effectively.

Ken Rushton   MusicScienceGuy

NOTES

*1. I  tested my keyboards using pitches ascending to the right, as on a piano. I found this arrangement was more than a pain; it was ugly; far harder to play and learn. 

*2. Some interesting snippets from the science journals:

Stoeckel T, Weigelt M. Brain lateralisation and motor learning: Selective effects of dominant and non-dominant hand practice on the early acquisition of throwing skills. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition. 2011;17(1):18–37.

Key Quote: “Participants initially practising with their dominant hand benefited more from practice than participants beginning with their non-dominant hand. These results indicate that spatial accuracy tasks are learned better after initial practice with the non-dominant hand, whereas initial practice with the dominant hand is more efficient for maximum force production tasks.”

Matias Edgar,  MacKenzie I. Scott, William Buxton  Half-QWERTY: a one-handed keyboard facilitating skill transfer from QWERTY. CHI '93 Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1993,  pp 88-94

“During the evaluation of a one-handed chord keyboard, Rochester, Bequaert, and Sharp [17] trained one student using the right hand only. The subject was later retrained to type with the left hand only. The subject ‘reached close to his right-hand typing speed in less than one third the time he spent learning right-handed typing’”

Teixeira L, Timing and Force Components in Bilateral Transfer of Learning. Brain and Cognition 44, 455–469 (2000) doi:10.1006/brcg.1999.1205, http://www.smpp.northwestern.edu/savedLiterature/Teixeira2000BrainAndCognition44p.455-469.pdf

“… bilateral transfer of learning took place for both anticipatory timing and force control, with more noticeable transfer of training for the former.”

3. Some simple experiments

If I learned to play an exercise in the program Piano Marvel to 100% accuracy with my right (preferred) hand (from less than 25% accuracy with either hand), the left hand could then play 60-70% of the notes correctly at the same speed.

The left hand then was able to get to 100% accuracy in about 1/3 the time. For example, when training the right hand took three hours, then training the left hand to the same speed and accuracy took only about an hour.

Curiously, this training of the left hand further improved the right hand. After teaching the left hand to play the excercise at 100 beats per minute, the right hand could play up to 110 beats per minute.