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!
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.)
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).
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard
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.
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).
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
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
I'm absolutely not calling it over-priced, just puzzled.
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.
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.
welcome to Capitalism and Niche Products sir
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Z4iPyFmAE
[0] that is, ~"scales"; usually all buttons will be working
[1] Piano accordion on top, button accordion with isomorphic layout on bottom: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_converter_free-bas...
Here a simulation
https://thetonnetz.com/
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
https://brettterpstra.com/topic/keyboard/
https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/
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.
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.
Edit: it seems it's doing so on Firefox, but not on Edge.