source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:12:26 -0800 Subject: generalized keyboard From: John Starrett All- Brad Busley, our instrument maker (scientific instruments) at University of Colorado at Denver Physics holds some basic patents (or pending patents) on aspects of membrane technology for generalized fingerboards for guitar like instruments. His work centers around a pressure and position sensitive membrane that reads the finger position on the "fingerboard" and translates position to pitch (which of course is software assignable to anything MIDI can handle). Finger pressure can then be translated into any controller stream desired. Brad can be contacted at bbusley@carbon.cudenver.edu. Be warned, he's quite busy and a little email negligent. I have designed, but not implemented, a generalized keyboard as follows: A position and pressure sensitive membrane is connected via software to 1) Display a pitch area screen on the computer, which can then be divided into pitch regions either with finger pressure tracing out the regions or with a mouse on the screen or other means. 2) Assign pitch (or pitches) to the regions. 3) Act as a "keyboard" in accordance with software rules definable by the user. A keyboard of this type can of course use pressure as well as position WITHIN a pitch region to modify pitches in any manner acceptable to MIDI. One could, for instance, have side to side position within the pitch region bend the pitch, up and down motion in the region change timbre and finger pressure control the amplitude. Time, demand and money are all that is keeping a generalized keyboard of this sort from the market. The technology exists and the programming for something like this is not exceptionally difficult. I am posting a schematic of this keyboard on my web page the 15th of this month. Let me know what you think of the idea. My web page is http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret. Yes, that really is a dash after www. John Starrett Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 13 Nov 1996 03:45 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02169; Wed, 13 Nov 1996 03:46:26 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA02154 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id SAA13555; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:46:20 -0800 Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:46:20 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu