Easy Piano Keyboard

[adXok]

I think alternate layouts would be better (and less controversially) marketed as co-existing with, rather than replacing, traditional ones. I may purchase a Roli or Linnstrument someday, but will never perform The Goldberg Variations on either.

Of course no one says a new design will replace already existing instrument with plethora songs and composition written exclusively for it.

I also would like to make it clear, that Pashkuli design has almost insignificant (though good and practical) connection to Paul Janko keyboards. Mine is more related to the works of Theophile Dreschke (a German engineer and hobby musician 150+ years ago).

[adXok]

The only way to avoid that would be to invent an instrument with dual mirror-image keyboards, one keyboard for each hand. One keyboard rises in pitch from left to right and the other keyboard rises in pitch from right to left.

Are you sure you haven't seen Pashkuli Keyboard before?! You can do that with it, splitting and then flipping the data flow in the left half. That is of course hidden option.
The most wise thing to do is to have two Pashkuli keyboards for that purpose.

[adXok]

[JoeCat]

I think alternate layouts would be better (and less controversially) marketed as co-existing with, rather than replacing, traditional ones. I may purchase a Roli or Linnstrument someday, but will never perform The Goldberg Variations on either.

Of course no one says a new design will replace already existing instrument with plethora songs and composition written exclusively for it.

...

You kinda did - the word 'replace' is right there in this quote from the beginning of the thread (granted, that was about three years ago!):

"Any other questions, please ask.
This keyboard one day will have to replace the old black-n-white clumsy one.
Me and the people involved into it will make it happen."

Still, good luck on your efforts!

[adXok]

Still, good luck on your efforts!

Thanks a lot!
Actually those are not my words, but the words of Franz Liszt (the famous piano player and composer) but that is a whole another topic (I just condensed them in a way). He predicted that around 50 years after his time the change will start to happen. Well... that didn't happen because of revolutions, the Two wars... state of the art wasn't developed towards music instruments but towards weapons instead (unfortunately).

[JCJR]

The only way to avoid that would be to invent an instrument with dual mirror-image keyboards, one keyboard for each hand. One keyboard rises in pitch from left to right and the other keyboard rises in pitch from right to left.

Are you sure you haven't seen Pashkuli Keyboard before?! You can do that with it, splitting and then flipping the data flow in the left half. That is of course hidden option.
The most wise thing to do is to have two Pashkuli keyboards for that purpose.

It ought to be possible with about any keyboard design, at least in principle.

For instance with old style monophonic analog keyboard synthesizers, the keyboard just outputs a voltage according to the key pressed and the voltage can be easily inverted and offset.

If I recall correctly, jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul (he played with Weather Report among others) would do the trick two handed with dual arp 2600 synths. One synth keyboard mirror image inverted.

A conventional keyboard mirror-flipped maybe makes the most sense by tuning the traditional E key to be the new C key.

That way playing a left hand finger pattern downward from the "conventional E location" would result in the same notes as the same finger pattern right-hand played upward from the "conventional C location". And so forth. E key maps to C note. B key maps to F note. A key maps to G note, etc.

Might be least confusing to configure a mirror image conventional keyboard E-to-E. Assuming that the matching non-mirror keyboard is laid out C-to-C.

That way playing the top key on the left hand keyboard would play the same note as the bottom key of the right hand keyboard. Maybe making it a little easier on the brain to get used to the mirror imaging.

You could mirror image map any design of midi keyboard via a midi plugin.

It would confuse heck out of me. Probably the kind of feature one would want to learn from the beginning rather than try to unlearn a long habit of "different fingering for each hand".

[adXok]

A conventional keyboard mirror-flipped maybe makes the most sense by tuning the traditional E key to be the new C key.

That way playing a left hand finger pattern downward from the "conventional E location" would result in the same notes as the same finger pattern right-hand played upward from the "conventional C location". And so forth. E key maps to C note. B key maps to F note. A key maps to G note, etc.
It would confuse heck out of me. Probably the kind of feature one would want to learn from the beginning rather than try to unlearn a long habit of "different fingering for each hand".

Oh, yes! With the standard keyboard the offset and remapping will be needed to preserve symmetry to the right hand (and some people are left-handed, but also learn the standard piano keyboard... feel bad for them - it is not that easy to restring/retune or simply flip a keyboard instrument like it is with guitars...). Probably the people who ever thought about this are one or two in a forum regarding music and instruments.

With Pashkuli keyboard all those "features" are available by default.

[BertKoor]

Pashkuly Keyboard

So how is it spelled then?
How did you come up with the name in the first place?

Am I right you want to abandon not only the traditional keyboard layout but traditional note names as well?

Have you thought through its implications?

Naming things the same universally serves for avoiding problems in communication. Even if the names are stupid. That does not matter anymore, since the words / names serve as symbols and we all know what they mean.

Making music requires communicating with others, speaking the same language. Introducing a new script imho does not solve any current problem, but rather introduces new ones.

We already had Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do from solfege (notes are named relative to whatever chosen tonic) but this Bo Da Fe Gu sequence seems to have no background nor support.

Are you sure you haven't seen Pashkuli Keyboard before?! You can do that with it, splitting and then flipping the data flow in the left half. That is of course hidden option.

Software to make things happen for user's convenience...

How odd though you laughed at the idea of using the Transpose option currently present on most master keyboards.

[adXok]

So how is it spelled then?
How did you come up with the name in the first place?

P is spelled like in the word "pill" or "picture"
A is spelled like in the word "latte" or in "attitude" (as a short A)
SH is spelled like in the word "ship" or "fish"
K is spelled like in the word "kiss" or "king"
U is spelled like in the word "wood" but also short
L is spelled like in the word "lip" or "list"
I is spelled again like in the word "lip" or "list", short and clear

Pashkuli means cocoons. Because the keys look like cocoons... marshmallow cocoons.

Am I right you want to abandon not only the traditional keyboard layout but traditional note names as well? Have you thought through its implications?

That is correct. There is no need for the sharp (♯), flat (♭), and natural (♮) symbols - they only make sense if you look at a piano.
Not only that but the Staff also needs general redesign to make it more accurate, meaningful and avoid ambiguity and other flaws of the standard one:
Pashkuli Notation System (Plain Notation System)

We already had Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do from solfege (notes are named relative to whatever chosen tonic) but this Bo Da Fe Gu sequence seems to have no background nor support.

D, R, M, F, S, L, T come from the medieval church chant "Sancti Ioannes" and actually Do was a replacement for Ut in the first line of the Latin lyrics: Ut queant laxis. The syllables fall on the "white" keys, hence the names. Then they made the first 7 Latin letters to be used as fewer and fewer people spoke Latin. Ti was originally Si - from the S and I as abbreviation for Sancte Ioannes.

It is (and was) a mess in a first place... but the Church had enormous influence back in the days.

B, D, F, G, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V is the complete sequence for all the 12 notes. It starts with the first letters from the Latin (English in our case) alphabet and skips the vowels and the ambiguous letters like C (can be pronounced as S or K, depending on the context). Also I was not sure if I should use G as it also has ambiguous pronunciation (gum or gem?!) but the English language suffers from those discrepancies anyway. K was skipped, H, J, Q, W...
As you can see I have written them in Cyrillic (which is my native script) - no ambiguity whatsoever.

How odd though you laughed at the idea of using the Transpose option currently present on most master keyboards.

It is present on the panel of the keyboard. You can transpose, but with the perfect uniform layout there would be no need to do it anyway. You will just move your hands from the desired root note and the fingerings, chord shapes, scales... everything stays the same.