source file: mills3.txt Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 10:49:05 +0100 Subject: Cheap Xen Keyboard (was Bucking the System] From: Steven Rezsutek [CCed to the list, as I think it may of some general interest] World Harmony Project Inc. writes: > I must have missed the posts leading up to your announcement of creating a > 22 tone MIDI keyboard. There really weren't any, only the "Bucking the System" post, and the brief errata. It was, quite literally, a spur of the moment thing. > I am very interested though. It sounds like a project > I have thought of for just intonation, but not yet produced. Would you tell > me about it, please? > Gladly. :-) To get a mental picture of the key layout, see Paul Erlichs post in digest 1234. [Thank you Paul, for enduring the tedium of ASCII painting. :-)] This is essentially 'it', with the exception of a gapped tooth effect between every second set of concecutive white keys. Note that I intended this keyboard to fit Pauls theories of 22TET, which I've been exploring. Other arrangements of the parts may well be possible, but I didn't try to work any out, as I got what I was after. Like Paul said, it doesn't help much in terms of stretching the fingers, but it does "break the thought mold", which was my primary goal. Not being a keyboard player, I'm not used to finding arbitrary patterns on the digitals, and need all the help I can get to break the 7 of 12 mental conditioning. As to the details: I'm using a cheap chinese import "keyboard for computer music" MK4902. They are currently being sold as "Kay Sound" around here, but the box is brandless. Upon dismantling the beast(s), I found it to be constructed of three different configurations of all-white or all-black keys tied to a strip of plastic at the back, used for mounting. All of the strips will have some obvious point at which the strip can be "snapped" apart. I snappend 'em all, and it is also necessary to trim off the little alignment pins on the underside, since they won't be reassembled in the same order. The white subassemblies that would be the C and E keys aren't used at all. The white keys are constucted from the remaining singletons, and other keys, and form subgroups of 3 white keys, with gaps for the black ones. I've forgotten the exact nature of the pieces at the moment, but it'll be pretty obvious once you start playing with the parts. The stacking order is important if you want the thing to fit together correctly. The black key pieces require some additional modification. The two key subassemblies have to be trimmed on the right so that the mounting tab stops at the key boundary. Then they will fit next to the three key asssemblies. The next step (which I haven't finished yet) involves the guide fingers and the lubricated pads which fit up into the plastic key, and which come in several sizes. The first thing to do is snip apart the strip with scissors and rearrange them so that you have a continous strip with the fingers in the same order as they keys. This is the easy part. The harder part is to trim the metal tabs on the base of the keyboard with tin snips so that all of the fingers fit correctly vertically. This is necessary as the tabs for the black keys are taller and will interfere with white key movement. I don't yet know if the horizontal size will make a big difference, but I have a tube of silicone adhesive handy for just such emergencies. That pretty much covers it. I've worked out the tuning table necessary, and only await the motivation to sit in front of the synth and "push and twirl" the front panel to load it up. I suppose that other "generic" keyboards are made in a similar manner, so this should be useful as a general guideline. Ones made where there are seperate keys that pivot on a rod should be easy enough to do, though if there are weighting mechanisms under the keys, that may cause some complications. Caveat tinkerer! Steve SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) Subject: Re: Bucking the system PostedDate: 14-11-97 11:00:38 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 14-11-97 10:59:18-14-11-97 10:59:19,14-11-97 10:59:32-14-11-97 10:59:33 DeliveredDate: 14-11-97 10:59:33 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C125654F.0036DC60; Fri, 14 Nov 1997 10:59:13 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00562; Fri, 14 Nov 1997 11:00:38 +0100 Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 11:00:38 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00560 Received: (qmail 11360 invoked from network); 14 Nov 1997 02:00:35 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 14 Nov 1997 02:00:35 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu