Keys: Musical Keyboard with Gesture Controls, Modularity, and LEDs | Hacker News Reader

Keys: Musical Keyboard with Gesture Controls, Modularity, and LEDs

playkeys.io

30 pointsnaveenspark18 comments

Interesting product with an amazing low price point. Being small and inexpensive, I am interesting in seeing how this can moving into educational settings. I loved the part of the video show a toddler learning to play. I will be interested in what the response from musicians will be to using this for performance and as a midi input device for working with audio software.

If you are looking for a traditional keyboard check out the McCarthy Illuminating Piano.

http://mccarthypiano.com/hardware.aspx

The proximity sensor seems very similar to the Roland "D-Beam" infrared light sensor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Beam, which is itself a bit of a gimmick. The design itself seems inspired by the KMI QuNexus http://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/qunexus/ .

The proximity sensor is indeed an IR based sensor similar in design to the D-Beam that Roland employs in some of their keyboards. The impetus for these sensors was the need to add a swipe gesture to transpose the keyboard up and down - the actual distance detection was a nice bonus which we exposed by it outputting control channel data.

Each sensor sends on a separate control channel, and when linking multiple keys devices together, the control channels are transposed so adjacent keys sensors each send CC on their own channel (so each sensor is mappable, and in the same fashion for a given configuration of devices)

Also - sorry for the double comment. The design was definitely influenced by similar form factor keyboards like the Op-1 and QuNexus although the latter does not use actual keys but is an MPC like pressure sensitive pad rather than a push/levered/actuated key. Also, in general, the design was influenced by the status quo of how producers / musicians approach such MIDI instruments and why/how they're used.

The biggest difference in our design is the exclusion of all controls, buttons knobs and so on which means that even though the Keys device is about the same size as some of these other portable devices, the keys themselves are nearly the same size and layout ratios as traditional. In other words, full size keys not mini size which is hard to tell in the pictures. This feature, of both our personal opinions and the feedback of professionals we gave Keys to, is significantly more important than any other in a truly useful as well as portable keyboard.

The fact that all controls are removed and the design is purely keys also allows for the modular nature, and the ability to connect Keys together in various ways as well as other modules.

Another interesting instrument:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artiphon/introducing-th...

Love the creativity. I have observed though that "musical" people can play anything, and non-musical people cannot. It has always been a curious thing which I first noticed in music classes at USC.

This is one of those learned things that becomes inborn, I think.

I have a few things I'm pretty good at, and I'll pick up & try anything, because it's fun. Most of the music I make is improvised. And I've been picking up & trying any instrument I run across for decades now, so I have snippets of experience in lots of things now.

My wife studied classical piano from an early age, and can sit down and sight-read stuff I haven't got a chance at playing on any instrument. But she never improvises, never tries out other instruments, and thus can't really do the same thing (pick up anything and make music on it).

We both have a (possibly-inborn) talent for music, but we've taken quite different paths, and those years spent quite differently really show, now.

That is an interesting contrast, and similar to ones I've seen. People who have trained on an instrument such as a piano (or violin in one case) from a young age, who are technically proficient but never stray off the music page. And people who like to play around with the notes and try different things, on anything, even non-instruments like soup cans at one campout I was on.

Almost anything can be used as an instrument; some easier than others (blowing over the top of a bottle), but just about everything makes noises that can then be organized, modified, etc. :)

You can make surprisingly complicated music just clapping.

I think the crucial difference is just in how we grew up thinking about music.

My wife grew up in a culture where everything was publicly judged, students and performers were rated & ranked, etc.. If you did something and you didn't do it well, you'd better do it in secret.

I wasn't free from those feelings, but it wasn't as emphasized; and as I grew up, I eventually had a good base of things I was known to be good at... which in a way freed me to do other things badly.

And the funny thing about trying lots of new things (and doing them badly) is that practice makes you better rapid competence in new things -- this works in music, but also in anything else in life.

This is what I most want to emphasize whenever anyone talks about people with natural talent for music, for example (which can seem particularly magic to people with little experience of their own).

There are probably some inborn elements involved -- how well your ears work, etc. -- but so much really is learned, and once you're hooked, the amount of "practice" in music and thinking about sound becomes huge.

I'm not a pro performer, and not likely to become one; but it's something I love, so I probably spent 6+ hours a day doing something with music interleaved into it. Not sitting down with an instrument, most of the time, but washing the dishes. Driving the car. Playing with my kids. Walking the dog.

So I can imagine how pervasive it could be for someone really focusing their life on music.

Natural talent, sure; but don't forget the hundreds of thousands of hours some people spend training their minds to the patterns of music.

why did they give it a non-standard keyboard layout? having the black keys be higher up & "overlap" front-to-back with the white keys is pretty crucial for playing with any sort of speed. also wary of the button-like keys vs traditional lever-like keys on real pianos.

other than that, the proximity sensor looks awesome, and the price point is pretty incredible! not to mention the light-up stuff for people learning.

I was worried about that too when we first started to give it to musicians. We had to test this design out first, before we launched it. I'm not a piano player, but I would produce music on flights to China and back a lot when we were doing manufacturing for the gTar and I would get these midi controllers and they would all break going in and out of my backpack.

That's where the design initially came from, but I knew one of the most important things is that the keys had to be full size. Mini key designs always left something to be desired, and I would just use my laptop keyboard instead - which seemed to be more effective and in the long run more convenient too - since these controllers were really cumbersome.

So when I first gave the design to musicians I was scared that they would immediately reject it. The Keys were full size, but the interface was different than what they were used to. But they made zero mention of it, and you can see in later half the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guKRk3WPc40

I know no feedback sounds like bad feedback, but in this case it was really positive. These guys would immediately start wailing on keys like it was natural. These are guys that do this for a living, and I didn't hear one comment about the difference in the keys from a traditional piano.

So take it for what it is - We weren't ignorant of the fact that Keys isn't a traditional design, but all the same - this approach also makes it significantly more portable - and the great thing about AMON (the networking stuff) is we could always make a traditional version and it would still work and link with the non-traditional layout.

Interesting -- I'd be curious to see what actual musicians would say. It really depends on the type of music you're building with it, I'd say.

I'm not primarily a keyboardist, but I use them; in this case it would surely be tricky to play anything that uses the black keys much; your hands have patterns memorized that (I'd imagine) would be tough to adapt to having the black keys on a separate row.

But because it's MIDI, it really does depend on what you're building, and it might not matter. Recording simple snatches of melody would be fine if you keep away from chromatic lines -- e.g., if you want to add a line that's in C minor, just record it in A minor (all white keys except maybe the G#), then transpose it in a few seconds.

You wouldn't play the Flight of the Bumblebee on it, though.

I can't disagree with you, these haven't gone out into the wild yet - but I will say I've seen some truly gifted piano players / keyboardists take to this without any mention of strange finger/hand issues with the layout.

I'll be honest, I'm not a keyboard player. I designed this to be truly mobile and portable without making compromises on the key size, which my theory is that having a full scale keyboard is more important than the traditional design of the keys. The former makes the device useful, and the later makes it familiar but also prevents it from being very portable without shrinking the keys or otherwise compromising on other dimensions.

I've seen people shred on Keys, it's pretty awesome to see, since I can barely play Yankee Doodle - but I'm getting a lot better!

I might have missed something, but have they left out touch sensitivity (i.e. velocity)? That's a major deal-breaker!

Ideally the dream keyboard would have BOTH.

For playing piano, and other player-volume controlled instruments, you want velocity sensitivity.

For organ, or maybe early electric "pianos" you don't...you want an expression/volume pedal. This is one reason a virtuoso organ player can do things a piano player couldn't - they can use all kinds of "wrong" reachs and finger movements that enable them to play things that they couldn't otherwise.

Keys has per-key key velocity implemented.

Are these full-size keys?

Keys has very close to full ratio keys to a standard piano. If you take it and put it up against a normal piano you'll see the keys span about the same length as two octaves, maybe by a difference of 2-3 mm.

This was a very critical aspect of the design and actually led to the implementation of the proximity sensors. We had to remove all controls to get this size but still be about the width of a 13" laptop - and the need for certain controls like octave transposition was the impetus for looking into other control methodologies like proximity based gestures.

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