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A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

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Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#51

Post by smosher »

shardling wrote: post #47
smosher wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't add up, unless you're counting everyone with a trial version of fruity loops on their system as having a studio. But even then, I think it's a stretch (everyone I know who does any kind of music production has at least $1k in non-computer hardware.) How exactly do you expect to get this to work with your existing tools? It's obviously not usefully MIDI-compatible.

A guitar or piano isn't MIDI compatible, and that hardly matters. If the instrument could really stand on its own, then compatibility isn't a problem.

Sure, but when you depend on synthesis compatibility is a big deal. History seems to support that, with respect to other novel electronic instruments. I was just now responding to a claim that this will work with existing synthesizers.

While I would like to have this kind of control, I would much rather have the flexibility that a standard MIDI keyboard with aftertouch affords with respect to synthesis.

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#52

Post by TylerE »

baddox wrote: post #31
mullr wrote: post #11

I'm very suspicious of this and related products. The thing that's really great about all our acoustic musical instruments is that when you push on them, they push back . I don't mean this simply in the normal force sense. Consider a guitar. You've got a string which you press over a fret with your left hand. This can be naively emulated by a switch. But with the guitar, the timber and pitch change depending on how y…

> It should be noted that computer synthesis (procedural or sampled) of keyboard-based is very convincing. They same cannot be said for any other instrument. I agree that keyboard instruments are the most convincing, and certainly the easiest virtual instruments to play (since playing a digital piano is the same as playing an acoustic piano), but there are some pretty expressive and convincing virtual instruments out…

Those are samplers, not synthesizers. (Yes, technically they are synths, but not what's usually meant by the term.) They're just many many GB of samples of real musicians playing real instruments.

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#53

Post by cturner »

jdietrich wrote: post #46
mullr wrote: post #11

I'm very suspicious of this and related products. The thing that's really great about all our acoustic musical instruments is that when you push on them, they push back . I don't mean this simply in the normal force sense. Consider a guitar. You've got a string which you press over a fret with your left hand. This can be naively emulated by a switch. But with the guitar, the timber and pitch change depending on how y…

Your argument doesn't hold water. The classical pipe organ, often referred to as "the king of instruments", is a synthesiser. The organ console is an electrical or pneumatic controller, with no direct connection to the pipes. Most large organs have considerable "latency", due to the distance from the console to the pipe room. Some pipes may be as much as a hundred feet away from the player, so the sound will take ove…

    > The organ console is an electrical or pneumatic
    > controller
When asked about the manual (keyboard) on an organ, many experienced organists will make fond noises about the mechanical action windchest. In this, the fingers get feedback from the windbox. Modern systems tend to control the wind supply through electronics which means no feedback for the organist.

I've no criticism of your theremin example though.

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#55

Post by ChuckMcM »

coldtea wrote: post #35
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

I assume it's the way it was shot that not all of the notes that are being played start or end with movements and/or touches of the keyboard. (not being snarky, its just noticeable is all) I think its great that people are doing alternative instruments like this. For a while we've had synthesizers providing the tone generator for recreated inputs (like the laser harp) but this gives us more input options. There is an…

> I assume it's the way it was shot that not all of the notes that are being played start or end with movements and/or touches of the keyboard. (not being snarky, its just noticeable is all) So you noticed that but you didn't notice that there is a track playing, and the performer lays another on top of it?

No I did not notice that they were in the process of laying down additional tracks. Here on Sunday the site seems to be down but the youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n-bEy9ISpM) it still there. Listening to the upper register track (the 'white' room) I still feel the mis-match between my ear and my eyes (ignoring the base line). Its not a big deal I just noted it. There has been a lot of 'fakery' in the synth market and so that twitch is perhaps stronger than it would be for other things.

When I had a Yamaha DX-11 for a while I also had the Yamaha breath controller (trying to recapture my trombone days I guess :-) but was never really satisfied with it. Later I really wanted to try a Morrison Digital Trumpet [1] but really really had a hard time spending $4K on something I might not use more than a couple of times.

[1] http://www.morrisondigitaltrumpet.com/

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#56

Post by eric_h »

colanderman wrote: post #49
jdietrich wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn't hold water. The classical pipe organ, often referred to as "the king of instruments", is a synthesiser. The organ console is an electrical or pneumatic controller, with no direct connection to the pipes. Most large organs have considerable "latency", due to the distance from the console to the pipe room. Some pipes may be as much as a hundred feet away from the player, so the sound will take ove…

Most large organs have considerable "latency", You don't even need to go as far as organs to see latency. Low-pitched stringed instruments such as fretless/upright bass guitars have latency due to the mechanics of the strings themselves; e.g. jazz bass players have to account for this when playing. Most good jazz bass players do this unconsciously. Polyphonic reed instruments (e.g. harmonicas, melodicas, accordions)…

"if you can feel the string in your fretting hand vibrate on a fretted instrument, you're doing it wrong."

Generally the entire body of an acoustic guitar vibrates with the sound of a plucked string - the fretting hand (being the only hand currently attached to the guitar) would likely feel the vibration carrying from the body, through the neck of the guitar. It's faint, but nevertheless perceivable.

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#57

Post by paperkettle »

http://madronalabs.com/ makes something called the Soundplane - it feels like a present someone sent me from the future.

So nice to touch. A high resolution / super responsive controller.. of wood! Maybe I'm just not enough of a cyborg but the wood surface made the Haken Continuum (wetsuit material) far less compelling. I worry the same thing of the Seaboard.

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#59

Post by some1else »

colanderman wrote: post #48
jdietrich wrote: post #30

They've got excellent PR, but they're not doing anything particularly novel. They're advertising a solution to a long-solved part of the puzzle, but saying nothing about the really difficult bit of electronic music control - interoperability. A quick bit of synthesiser history: Traditional electronic keyboards sense how hard you hit the key with two switches, set a distance apart vertically. Measure the time between…

MIDI is an 8-bit protocol, operating at 31.25kbaud. False. That is but one transport option for MIDI data. USB-MIDI is another, much higher bit-rate protocol. The standard doesn't include any means of transmitting expression data other than velocity on a per-note basis. False. MIDI provides polyphonic aftertouch as a standard (i.e. not NRPN or SysEx) message type. If you try and send too much controller information o…

Many OSC based applications for the monome[1] were ported to work with the copy-paste-avalanche of grid controllers (Launchpad, APC). The USB-MIDI data rate limitations are clearly visible when trying to change the state of 64 keypads at once. 64 individual signals with 8ms latency completely break the flow[2], compared to a single optimized OSC message.

Your counterpoints are correct, but MIDI is a better choice over OSC only due it's widespread compatibility. However, it's pointless to stick to USB-MIDI in the long run. It couldn't support the more complex DIY controller requirements as far as 6 years ago, so I can only imagine the chasm increasing.

A new inter-operable standard that surpasses MIDI and OSC was envisioned back on 2009 called ioFlow[3], but unfortunately it hasn't taken off yet.

P.s.: The website the story refers to is returning a 403, so my comment is here only to support the claim, that starting out with MIDI in 2013 is not the best idea.

Edit: Now that the site is online, I can respond to the product itself. It's probably a good fit for keyboard musicians, but I'd recommend the true hacker to pick up this indy marvel: Madrona SoundPlane-A[4], which has been in development for approximately 4 years. The concept is very, very similar. But it's not bound to the linear piano scale like the Roli. You can play it like guitar frets or better yet, explore 2 dimensional note layouts, such as the ones invented by Euler[5], popularized by Kaosscilator and now Ableton Push. Also, it runs on OSC, so you can enjoy the low latency, and build your own paradigms by transforming the signals in Cycling 74 Max or other OSC capable programming environments.

[1] http://monome.org/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

[3] http://ioflow.berlios.de/

[4] http://madronalabs.com/hardware

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnetz

Re: A new type of piano keyboard: The Seaboard

#60

Post by lttlrck »

colanderman wrote: post #48
jdietrich wrote: post #30

They've got excellent PR, but they're not doing anything particularly novel. They're advertising a solution to a long-solved part of the puzzle, but saying nothing about the really difficult bit of electronic music control - interoperability. A quick bit of synthesiser history: Traditional electronic keyboards sense how hard you hit the key with two switches, set a distance apart vertically. Measure the time between…

MIDI is an 8-bit protocol, operating at 31.25kbaud. False. That is but one transport option for MIDI data. USB-MIDI is another, much higher bit-rate protocol. The standard doesn't include any means of transmitting expression data other than velocity on a per-note basis. False. MIDI provides polyphonic aftertouch as a standard (i.e. not NRPN or SysEx) message type. If you try and send too much controller information o…

Nitpick but surely you can still try to send too much data over USB-MIDI and have similar issues. And given the nature of USB it might even be harder to estimate where that limit lies.
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