Terpstra Keyboard

Posted by cl3misch 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by triclops200 3 days ago

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 essentially. Great hardware, can reccomend!

Comment by gcanyon 3 days ago

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.

Comment by swiftcoder 3 days ago

> 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

Comment by Fnoord 3 days ago

Hall effect by Wooting costs like a few hunderd EUR and have been around for quite some years, and this one with OLED is from 2007, costing 1600 USD (not worth it IMO) [1]. You don't typically look at your keyboard, same with toich bar. I guess there's a niche ie. Stream Deck (also overpriced). Doubt keys last long, given OLED burn-in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard

Comment by Palomides 3 days ago

if they sell 100 of these per year (which I doubt), with profit of $3000 per unit (which I also doubt), that pays enough to employ like one person (who needs to handle sales, support, marketing, three or four different kinds of engineering, etc.)

Comment by pfannkuchen 3 days ago

I feel like most projects like this must be run by people who are independently wealthy(ish) already and are in it for the long run? Like if this style took off enough to mass produce they could eventually make a lot of money, but if they keep it niche they are never going to make significant money no matter how much they charge.

I could definitely imagine a smaller cheap plasticky version of this being pitched as a more intuitive way for kids to learn piano, maybe that's where they're aiming?

Comment by LeBit 3 days ago

So, like if Batman was into optimizing musical keyboard layouts instead of whatever he’s doing.

Comment by Johanx64 3 days ago

Lets presume this thing retails at - very unrealistic low price - of $500.

How many people would buy this weird thing per month - even at this low price point? 10? 50? 100?

Imagine you're an engineer and your competency is worth $200,000/year. If this retailed at 1/10th - as you suggested - so $500, and lets generously say you make $100usd per unit at this price point.

You have to atleast sell ~166 of these "weird" niche things per month, every month, no exceptions to match. And you're probably not a single person, so way more.

Can you? And why bother?

More importantly, can you even make these things for $400usd when your order quantity is only 166units per month?

And this is after spending years(?) in development, and some non negligible amount of cap ex.

Comment by fipar 3 days ago

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).

Comment by viccis 3 days ago

Clavinovas in that range have very intricate internal actions and don't have simple 1 year warranties lol

Comment by cwillu 3 days ago

A tenth of that gets you a basic but solid 88-key Roland FP-10; that's something they will sell a shit ton of and which shares components with several other pianos.

It's also worth noting that a piano or piano-like keyboard will be taking _much_ greater impacts than any typist inflicts on a computer keyboard; a music keyboard needs a mechanical action that can properly and rapidly reset the keys, withstanding many rapidly repeated simultaneous heavy strikes.

Comment by fxwin 3 days ago

> 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

Comment by swiftcoder 3 days ago

> 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

Comment by gcanyon 3 days ago

Yeah, velocity definitely jumped out at me as a difference, but it seems(?) like being velocity-sensitive could 2x the cost, maybe even 3x, but not 10x ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm absolutely not calling it over-priced, just puzzled.

Comment by ianthehenry 3 days ago

Well the only moving part in a typing keyboards is a mass-produced switch that you slot into a PCB. There are mass-produced hall effect switches that can provide velocity sensitivity, but it's a pretty distant comparison. The keys on a lumatone aren't anything like buttons; they're weighted mechanical arms with significant travel -- much more like a piano key than a keyboard key. And it has 280 of these! The degree of mechanical hardware in this thing makes it seem not really comparable to a PCB with some switches slotted into it.

That said! There are people making DIY isomorphic keyboards using hall-effect keyboard switches. None are commercially available right now, but see e.g. the MidiHex at https://gullsonix.co.uk/. You could make one for a fraction of the cost of a lumatone -- but of course it would be a very different instrument.

Comment by Blackthorn 3 days ago

Lot of finicky keys with velocity sensitivity and polyphonic after touch.

Comment by luqtas 3 days ago

> Any idea why something like this costs $5,000? It seems like manufacturing costs would justify 1/10th of that maybe?

welcome to Capitalism and Niche Products sir

Comment by Johanx64 3 days ago

What does it have to do with "Capitalism" per se?

If you have a well made, but very niche product that sells in very small volumes it will be expensive.

If any of the labour & assembly happens in US that turns it into unavoidable inevitability.

If it was cheaper, it would be a loss making hobby.

A country without "capitalism" wouldn't make such product for sale to begin with.

Comment by luqtas 3 days ago

maybe a society which has laws and regulations voted by citizens (anarchy for example) commercial products shouldn't profit over 700% or some absurdity which caps the 5000 usd number... it's not like velocity sensible keys are expensive or overly complex to produce

micro-tonal instruments are prevalent in various cultures which weren't flooded by Europe and then North America by hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. it's pretty easy to find examples on countries inside Africa and Asia

Comment by Johanx64 3 days ago

Where are you getting your numbers - profit over 700%? If so I want in!

Unless you know how many units they sell per month, and what are their expenses exactly, and how many people are employed, and amortized cap ex and R&D cost, you're just making shit up on the spot.

Lets say this thing moves two units per month, and each brings $4000 in pure profit (costs per unit $1000). If company has one employee. Now you've made $96000/yr.

Which is way less than a single competent engineer or entrepreneur in US is worth. Ie. they are losing money.

This is fundamental quality of very low-volume, very niche products. They are almost never priced anywhere near their bill-of-materials cost.

> micro-tonal instruments are prevalent in various cultures which weren't flooded by Europe and then North America by hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. it's pretty easy to find examples on countries inside Africa and Asia

So buy one of those then?

Comment by nayuki 2 days ago

> maybe a society which has laws and regulations voted by citizens (anarchy for example) commercial products shouldn't profit over 700% or some absurdity which caps the 5000 usd number

No problemo. The consequence of that law is you'll simply not get those products on the market because there's not enough profit to justify someone spending the time to make them.

See also: Rent control, minimum wage, price control (e.g. maximum price of gasoline during a shortage).

Comment by ErroneousBosh 2 days ago

> micro-tonal instruments are prevalent in various cultures which weren't flooded by Europe and then North America by hundreds,

They're probably most prevalent in Europe, though. That's where most microtonal instruments come from.

Comment by cwillu 3 days ago

> it's not like velocity sensible keys are expensive or overly complex to produce

Oh, my sweet summer child; music instrument keys are mechanically not the same thing as a computer keyboard. There are moving parts involved that need to handle routine forces that easily break a normal computer keyboard. 𝆑𝆑𝆑 calls for your whole arm and torso.

Comment by luqtas 3 days ago

oh yes, this isn't a physical instrument but a MIDI keyboard, not in a thousand worlds you need an arm and a torso for a fortissimo

Comment by cwillu 3 days ago

I have an FP-10 keyboard 3 feet from me that requires that to generate a midi message with a velocity of 255 at the lowest sensitivity setting, and not much less than that at the middle-low setting. If I hit my computer keyboard as hard as I played it an hour ago, keycaps would have gone flying.

Comment by luqtas 3 days ago

fine you won :( but i still make my point on Terpstra. they use hall effect sensors and have continuous actuation force...

Comment by nh2 2 days ago

> oh, it seems that the lumatone is the commercialized version essentially

From the same makers or others?

On the website I can find no info whether this project is concluded or not.

Comment by bryanrasmussen 2 days ago

have you ever tried a midi fighter? https://www.midifighter.com/ if so how do they compare?

I would expect the midi fighter with less keys would be somehow easier to control and get better results from.

Comment by coldpie 3 days ago

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 together. If you learn the major triad shape on this keyboard, then you can move to the note C and play that shape and get a C major triad, or move to the note D and play that exact same shape and get a D major triad.

This is different from a linear layout like a traditional piano. Note above that the D major triad has an F# which means it is played on one of the piano's black keys, while the C major triad does not have a sharp, which means it is played entirely on the white keys. You have to keep track of which particular chord you are playing in order to know whether you need a black key or a white key. This means the shape you play to get each major triad is different, so a traditional piano is not an isomorphic ("same shape") layout.

Guitars are also isomorphic (when all the strings being played are fretted) and may be easier to think about. If you imagine fretting the lowest two strings at the 5th fret and playing them both, and then moving your finger up one fret on both strings, the interval between each of those two groupings of notes is the same - you've moved them each up one step, but the difference between them stays the same based on however the strings are tuned. Similar to this keyboard, on a guitar you can learn the shape of a (fully fretted) major triad, and then move that shape anywhere on the neck to play any major triad.

Accordion bass buttons work the same way. Looks confusing if you don't have any idea what's going on, but it's actually very intuitive and easy to learn and play.

Comment by dsego 3 days ago

Not only the bass buttons, there is a type of chromatic button accordion, popular in eastern europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Z4iPyFmAE

Comment by ErroneousBosh 2 days ago

I can't find it now but a while back on R*dd*t /r/synthesizers there was a diatonic Korg Triton that someone had clearly had custom made - possibly from the guts of a diatonic MIDI accordion, not sure.

It looked pretty slick, not the usual homebrewed raggy-edge crap. Someone had clearly spent quite a lot of money on getting *exactly* what they wanted.

Comment by gpvos 3 days ago

And then there are diatonic accordions, which all use a similar layout both for the bass and melody sides (but you can't play in all keys[0] on them, that's the difference between chromatic and diatonic). While they are simpler than chromatic accordions, they are now usually more expensive because fewer people play them.

[0] that is, ~"scales"; usually all buttons will be working

Comment by jrflo 3 days ago

That's really cool, I would definitely be interested in a "normal" keyboard that had this kind of layout as a guitar player. Needing to remember different hand shapes to play a major chords took a long time to get used to - would love to be able to just "slide up" the shape like you do on guitar with bar chords.

Comment by coldpie 3 days ago

I'm also primarily a guitar player. I picked up a piano accordion earlier this year, and I'm wondering if I should've gotten a button accordion instead[1]. A linear piano layout is just hard to wrap my head around, hahah. I guess it's probably good to learn, though, so I'll stick with it.

[1] Piano accordion on top, button accordion with isomorphic layout on bottom: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_converter_free-bas...

Comment by iAMkenough 3 days ago

The House of the Rising Sun test of the commercial version of this keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZv13YZzSM

Comment by altairprime 3 days ago

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).

Comment by taybin 3 days ago

Now piano players will be able to join guitar players as not needing to read music or know theory!

Comment by stackghost 3 days ago

Music theory has very little to do with playing music.

Comment by taybin 3 days ago

Agreed, but it’s helpful for communicating to other musicians.

Comment by leephillips 2 days ago

What kind of guitar players are these? Are you talking about pop music?

Comment by coldpie 2 days ago

I think they're just making a guitar player stereotype joke. As a guitar player myself, I thought it was funny.

Comment by ttoinou 3 days ago

French music researcher and youtuber “Mathémusiques” also has a weird experiment with 2D graphs for music notes

Here a simulation

https://thetonnetz.com/

Comment by encomiast 3 days ago

The video makes claims about how much easier it is to learn to play with this keyboard layout vs, the traditional piano layout. But learning the chords has never been the difficult part of playing the piano. Learning arpeggios, scales, repertoire, all while being relaxed and expressive is the hard part. I wonder if this makes any of that easier?

It seems like this can get you from zero to the equivalent of picking up a few chords and how to strum on guitar fairly quickly. But I would be curious what mastery of this instrument looks like? If you were the Oscar Peterson or Franz Liszt of this thing, how would the layout limit or enable you?

Comment by altairprime 3 days ago

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

Comment by jzb 3 days ago

Finally, a keyboard that’s perfect for Emacs.

Comment by pluc 3 days ago

Been a while since I've seen an HTTP-only website

Comment by Blackthorn 3 days ago

I have a Lumatone and I do like it, but I think the benefits of isomorphism are somewhat oversold. It does let you think in intervals, but on the other hand thinking in steps becomes harder.

Comment by xhevahir 2 days ago

When i play my Axis-49 keyboard i find that i don't know how to do voice leading. I guess it's kind of like a guitar in that respect too.

Comment by thih9 3 days ago

https://polyend.com/keys/

A recent product concept, computer keyboard with function keys arranged like piano keys.

Also intersects music, technology and keyboard layout, but from a different angle.

Comment by mehackernewsacc 3 days ago

Just be aware that Polyend's modus operandi is to constantly churn out new hardware and not properly support and fix bugs in the software of things already released. Always on to the next thing.

Comment by Zambyte 3 days ago

I found this ubder the Play it now! page. Funny name collision with the Scala programming language :)

https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

Comment by sharkjacobs 3 days ago

I really expected this to be something from Brett Terpstra

https://brettterpstra.com/topic/keyboard/

Comment by jpease 2 days ago

Seems like a Novation Launchpad (or similar) checks a lot of the same boxes, for a fraction of the cost and desk space.

Comment by HelloUsername 3 days ago

Last year discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44308558

Comment by einpoklum 3 days ago

This looks like the Go of keyboards. If I hit the keys encircling a group of other keys maybe I can flip their color 8-|

Comment by Tistron 3 days ago

You're mixing up Go and Othello :)

Comment by N19PEDL2 3 days ago

Why is it redirecting to the website of a Romanian IT company?

Edit: it seems it's doing so on Firefox, but not on Edge.

Comment by Fnoord 3 days ago

HTTP;DR

If you got a product to demonstrate, have the dignity to use HTTPS. With a remotely exploitable vulnerability in Google Chrome V8 in the wild, all the more reason to. Even though I am using Mozilla Firefox, there's probably some Chromium-based software I use.