Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terpstra Keyboard

terpstrakeyboard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#21

Post by swiftcoder »

gcanyon wrote: post #12
triclops200 wrote: post #4

I play the lumatone ( https://www.lumatone.io/ ) which is very similar. I personally love it, especially as I like to do a lot of improv in various tunings, and the layout makes transposing and thinking about structure so much easier than a traditional keyboard. The terpstra seems similar, not sure what their selling point is over the lumatone. Edit: oh, it seems that the lumatone is the commercialized version essent…

Any idea why something like this costs $5,000? It seems like manufacturing costs would justify 1/10th of that maybe? Disclaimer: I'm not a hardware manufacturer nor retailer, I'm just going off what regular typing keyboards go for.

> I'm just going off what regular typing keyboards go for.

It's not that long ago that a mechanical keyboard with Hall-effect switches and individually-addressable LEDs would have set you back a couple of grand.

The mechanical keyboard scene has exerted really significant downward pressure on the cost of this sort of thing - something that likely doesn't hit the music world due to lower volumes

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#22

Post by swiftcoder »

fxwin wrote: post #16
gcanyon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea why something like this costs $5,000? It seems like manufacturing costs would justify 1/10th of that maybe? Disclaimer: I'm not a hardware manufacturer nor retailer, I'm just going off what regular typing keyboards go for.

> I'm just going off what regular typing keyboards go for. Are there any regular typing keyboards with velocity sensitive keys? I genuinely don't know, it's just the first thing I'd compare this to

> Are there any regular typing keyboards with velocity sensitive keys? I genuinely don't know

Yes, a number of the mechanical keyboards that use Hall effect switches let you access the velocity data. Wooting has an official SDK, and there are community-supported drivers for a number of Keychron boards

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#24

Post by fipar »

gcanyon wrote: post #12
triclops200 wrote: post #4

I play the lumatone ( https://www.lumatone.io/ ) which is very similar. I personally love it, especially as I like to do a lot of improv in various tunings, and the layout makes transposing and thinking about structure so much easier than a traditional keyboard. The terpstra seems similar, not sure what their selling point is over the lumatone. Edit: oh, it seems that the lumatone is the commercialized version essent…

Any idea why something like this costs $5,000? It seems like manufacturing costs would justify 1/10th of that maybe? Disclaimer: I'm not a hardware manufacturer nor retailer, I'm just going off what regular typing keyboards go for.

I’ve only seen videos of this keyboard but never played one. With that disclaimer out of the way, the price is comparable to mid-range clavinova models.

The clavinova does have a piano-like body, very very good built in sounds (including binaural for 2 types of piano in mine), and built in speakers, so there’s that.

On the other hand, this one says “built to order” while clavinovas are not.

All this to say that, while expensive, it does not seem outrageous if the keyboard plays good. This one has after touch too, which makes it more comparable with a synth than a digital piano (though I understand this one is just a controller).

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#27

Post by altairprime »

coldpie wrote: post #2

For folks wondering wtf is going on with the key layout, this is what's called an isomorphic ("same shape") layout. The idea is you can learn how to play a certain grouping of notes relative to each other, and then you can play that same grouping anywhere on the keyboard relative to some other note. So for example a C major triad is the notes C-E-G played together. And a D major triad is the notes D-F#-A played toget…

The layout can also be tuned for microtonal variants that wouldn't normally be playable without handcrafted custom instruments or per-string adjustable guitar frets or etc. I'm not fully familiar with the domain yet but as part of studying Caftaphata I ended up diverging into isomorphics for 41edo — someone else made https://mindparade.us/images/41edo_layout_8x8.png which could help explain that (cert warning asterisk noted).

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#29

Post by altairprime »

For those just now encountering isomorphic keyboards, my experience with them is purely in software on a tablet, courtesy of a pair of extremely tangential links that I encountered a while back. While esoteric, they're what have made me wish that I was wealthy enough to get a physical isomorphic panel for a hobby — but as a non-pro and student, it's not yet time, so software it is. There are various websites and apps that implement them — either isomorphic or microtonal + either keyboard or midi should locate them for whatever platform is of interest. And then, for two things completely tangential:

Physicists may particularly appreciate that someone made a distorted isomorphic keyboard layout that implements 5-limit just intervals and it ends up being a quasicrystal. While not a true isomorphic, it certainly draws connections that I don't otherwise get to talk about on HN much, and if one were to take the 7-JI 3-D quasicrystal and combine it with a webcam theremin, I'm sure the results would be entertaining. https://old.reddit.com/r/microtonal/comments/1l1m0e6/quasiis...

Caftaphata is one woman's ten year project to create a conlang ('constructed language') that converts human mandibular positions into 5-D chords and builds a tetris-block language of phonetic rules out of them. There are maybe twenty videos posted so far presenting each stage of the grammar and construction patterns. Each chord is a word constructed by plain rules. Studying these videos since they launched a year ago is what led me to learn about isomorphic keyboards. The accompanying instructional videos also have the distinction of being narrated fully in Lisatopian (the creator's first conlang), so not only sound but also subtitles end up being required. This is the Caftaphata intro video; 5 minutes, sound is mandatory and may feel dissonant at times: https://youtu.be/cMnuMjXeHrY

Post reply on HN