source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 08:44:37 -0800 Subject: RE: New Post from Brian From: Paul Hahn On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, PAULE wrote: > I don't know how playable the 1796 31-tone instrument really was, but > Fokker's keyboard certainly solves the problem of making a 31-tone keyboard > as playable, nay, more playable, than the standard 12-tone keyboard, while > retaining familiar fingering patterns for diatonic scales. Everyone should > have one of these keyboards, yet I don't think a single one exists outside > the Netherlands. What a backwards world we live in. Actually there's an arcifoon here in St. Louis, thanks to the efforts of Leigh Gerdine and his connection with the Netherlands 31-tone contingent. I've played on it some, and while workable it's not the greatest--the keys are electric-typewriter keys, blech. I'd much prefer something like the generalized keyboard that Wendy Carlos diagrams in the 1988 _Computer Music Journal_ Microtonality issue, with keys roughly the size and shape of standard piano black keys. In that issue, Wendy mentioned the (pipe-dreamish) possibility of pressuring some manufacturer to make such a keyboard that could be used as a front-end to drive MIDI instruments. I'd love it if it could actually happen, but as far as I've seen the xenharmonic community has yet to accumulate sufficient clout. --pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote) O /\ "Well, so far, every time I break he runs out. -\-\-- o But he's gotta slip up sometime . . . " Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 18:08 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA04362; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 18:09:37 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA04374 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA12411; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 09:09:33 -0800 Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 09:09:33 -0800 Message-Id: <199611111206_MC1-BD1-58E8@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu