Ways to make sounds

What sound production software goes well with it?

• e.g. Garratin Personal Orchestra 
• What computers go well with it? - netbooks do well.
  
• What amps go well?

Jammer support

• books
• manuals
• Teachers
• fingerings and techniques for playing
  

Training and lessons

Hardware needed.

• Jammer accessories
• pad,
• controls
• footpedals - Korg nano series.
  
• joysticks 
  

Software needed

What else works well with the unit?

Better USB connectors.
Music notation, packaging for travel, easy gig setup?

First. a separate keyboard for each hand

Rationale: key-to-note assignment can be made symmetrical, so one can transfer skills between hands, halving the number of fingerings to learn. Further:

• Each keyboard assignable to a unique instrument
• Each keyboard assignable to overlap the other to a variable degree, making "special" effects like contrapuntal motion simpler, even trivial
• One's hands won't run into each other
• Two keyboards make a smaller package than a single, long one
• They can be put on a table, on a stand in front of the player, on the chest, or held like a guitar
• Far more ergonomic, as they can be angled and positioned to suit
• Ends the tyranny of the right-handed keyboard on the left-handed

Second, an ergonomic key-to-note layout 

A consistent layout (isomorphic) layout is essential. This reduces the number of key combinations to learn.

 

Third, an efficient key shape

The touch weight of the key should be "light" 45 grams - the lighter, the faster one can play, up to some limit.
At 65 grams or more, it gets hard to play eighth notes. A qwerty keyboard is about 45 gms.

Fifth, compact keyboard dimensions

Wicki layout: minimum of 5 rows high 2 1/2 octaves, up to 8 rows (4 octaves)

    Width: Absolute minimum: 6 keys, better: 7- 10 best: 12-14

Axis layout: minimum of 6 rows high: 2 1/2 octaves, up to 8 rows (4 octaves)

    Width:  Absolute minimum: 7 keys,  best: 14

With my 4-row jammers I find 4 rows; 2 octaves is cramped, and sometimes must use the left hand.

I'm aiming for a unit that I can just pick up and start playing in the same key as my buddies, wider (~10 keys) is better for this, as you can guess the key, then adjust the hand position to the right key in seconds.

The net dimensions turn out well: each keypad is under 20 cm by 20 cm (10 inches square), making for a compact, portable keyboard.

Sixth, ergonomic foot pedals

Two pedals - normally for sustain, one for each keyboard

They should have a Velcro bad so they can be joined together, or separated, one for each foot.

Note that they don't have to be plugged into the keyboard, instead they should be plugged into the computer. 

Seventh, ergonomic special controls

What twit placed the pitch and special effects mod wheels way, way off to the left side? Clearly it was the keyboard engineer, and the dolt thought purely of his own convenience, not the musicians'.

Special effect controls should be put on the bottom to be reached quickly, using a joystick (2 dimensions of control at a finger's touch) instead of huge, clumsy wheels. I suggest either keyboard-mounted like on the Thummer as the ThumStik (patented BTW!), or as I suggest, mounted on the hand and attached to the thumb-tip

Ditto for the special controls like octave-shifting and key-modulation: put them near the fingers or thumb!

 

So, how do we achieve this lofty "ideal"? Forthcoming ... 

Notes:

Future wish list

1. Jim Plamondon, of Thummer fame, did a extensive analysis on the optimum shape and patented his deductions: it turns out that if one leaves a gap between keys and makes them oval in shape, one can get a considerable reduction in spacing, to 15mm or less, permitting nearly twice the number of keys to be easily (and quickly reached). This would be the "sports car model" for keeners. Refinements like this can wait.

3. More features
Acceleration - on a piano the hammer-head's shaft bends, adding an quirky acceleration factor (it changes the string bounce) that allows the percussion and timbre of the notes to change. Try using the finger tip vs the flat of the finger (gives different acceleration profiles) on a piano key - you should be able to hear what I mean.
Aftertouch  - This gets mixed reviews; many new keyboards have dropped this feature. 

The Coles-notes version of how the jammer works
Explained in Easier to Learn? and Building a better keyboard are the detailed (many would say pedantic) rationale behind the design of the Jammer’s seemingly weird key layout.
Should you ever be possessed of the need to explain it quickly, here’s the TV-news-sound-bite way to do it:

First, In music’s all-important, major scale the important notes are the white notes on a piano. But; when laid out in a line like that, they are hard and slow to play, as:

• the hands have to move around a lot and beginners have to look at the keyboard
  
• its really inconsistent
  
• the keys that sound worst when played together are right next to each other, so anyone not an expert can and will make mistakes

It’s an honest-to-goodness elitist, albeit inadvertent, conspiracy.

 

So so does one fix it?

 

First, you move the keys around a bit.

If you stack them so they are closer together, and especially put  notes that usually are played together, in various combinations, close together.

Added bonus #1: often they can be played with one finger.

Bonus #2: this also makes the fingering consistent, so you need only learn one fingering, not twelve.

 
Second, as another bonus granted by the fickle laws of mathematics, the troublesome black keys move out of the way:

Bonus #4:

Jammer theory sound-bite

We can put an on extra set of keys on the other side to make them easy to reach. Thus automatically springs into existence a "Sharp" and a "flat" section, because this thing is built around music theory.

Voila! All three problems are solved. Plus you get quintuple bonus points because it matches the way we hear music, as I've described in  "Building a better keyboard".

That's the simple, powerful idea - just move the keys to where they are more reachable, useful and one makes far less mistakes.

And that's why I'm so keen on the jammer: it's simple enough for even yours truly to understand.

That’s easier to learn – what about easier to play?

While the Janko pattern is cool, it flopped a century ago, and perhaps not all the blame lies in greedy piano teachers. After all, pianos are hard to lug around, and an reduction from learning 12 (!) fingering patterns to just 1 streamlines only one part of the playing experience. After all, the simple alternative is to just learn one pattern as was often done.

Can we do better? Can we take advantage of the fact that some notes are physically adjacent? Normally on a piano you’d seldom play adjacent (Black and white) notes.

Lets look at the important notes in the scale. In all scales there’s a special note, the Root, it’s odd twin the Octave,  shown in green on the right.

They have special partners the 5^th and the 4^th, also know as the dominant and  sub-dominant. 

Practically every musically useful chord pairs a root or the octave with the 4^th or 5^th. With a linear layout, the useful notes are spread out and you have to bop around a lot: great, big hand motions are needed, and the piano keys are big and heavy because the thumb also has to be able to play them.
And ... you can’t wear a piano, or even carry it to your next gig.

If we slide the notes in the second row over a bit, the 4^th and the 5^th can be put right above the root.

Consequences both simple and a bit bizarre:

• On the third row above, the octave naturally appears above the root, between the 4^th and 5^th. All the important notes touch.
• The design is brilliant. My thanks go to the inventor, Brian Hayden.
• We can play the commonest useful pairs of notes with one finger.
• Thus suddenly almost every chord needs one less finger - often two!
  

  Less 'Spacey' notes
• Add a few more rows and the hand movement needed to switch octaves drops from feet to mere inches.
• Instead of moving the hand a lot left and right, just the fingers have to move a bit up and down
  
• Bizarre side effect #1; it gets harder to play wrong notes, as the dissonant pairs have been pushed apart. 
• Bizarre side effect #2; you can play new patterns with your hand turned sideways.
• Since the keys are closer, one can play more exotic and interesting chords with one hand - you can jam!

And there's more:

• The thumb is free to do cool things to the sound, as is shown at thummer.com.
• The human brain is wired to think in this pattern, so players understand it deeply.
  

So there you have it – here’s an instrument that you can play in any key, significantly faster, and as I show in the next segment, also allows you to jam, improvise, arrange, understand and therefore teach music far faster.

So how do you get one? You either join the ThumClub, and lobby for a Thummer(tm) (joining does not seem to get you more than 2 emails a year, for those spam-shy), or build one. I, naturally, recommend both.

* We'll deal with thirds later; they are a fully a topic on their own.

* Also note the this idea is not unique, a guitar's strings mostly go up in fourths (4th, 4th, 4th, 3rd & 4th to be precise), and some guitarists tune all their strings up in perfect fourths, violins strings are always tuned up in perfect 5ths. Finally, European accordions (concertinas) have this precise layout, known formally as Wicki-Hayden.

Downside:

Thus far, I don't know of much in the way of problems with this system, except that its a touch more complex (at first) than the Janko system. Even playing a chromatic scale (ascending semi-tones) is easier than on a piano.

Gavin Healy, one of the world's first jammer players, wrote:

"What I found amazing is that the Thummer taught me patterns of intervals like this one: whole-tone, whole-tone, semi-tone; whole-tone, whole-tone, whole-tone, semi-tone – which defines the major scale. This to me was like a revelation; I could simply remember this pattern and automatically transfer it to my instrument of choice. I felt like this was a hidden secret of music theory. Instead of learning all these different fingerings for scales, chords, progressions etc on the piano or whatever instrument when I was a kid, I could have been taught the geometry of music which actually makes more sense."