Chord ergonomics

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paco
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:08 pm

Chord ergonomics

Post by paco »

Jesse,

First off . . . Wow!

Now, on the issue of chords, I've done a little ergonomic study and I think you could implement it this way for simple chords so they are playable on the fly. It's a bit of a modification on the "Casio chord" method of Casio keyboards.

1. Add a selection on the upper right button to add chords; this adds a lower octave to the scale, used to select chords and two extra buttons on the upper half of the left edge (or right edge for lefties) to change the chord type. The lower of the two buttons selects a 7th chord if pressed, the upper switches from major to minor (or vice-versa, if the selected note would give a minor chord in the current scale).

2. To play, the left index finger selects the pitch on the lowest octave. Middle and ring finger press on the buttons described above, as needed to produce a 7th or modulated chord. Chords are naturally major or minor depending on the scale chosen. Right hand thumb plays the melody on the upper octaves.

3. It would be cool to be able to select a different patch for the chords, maybe through a menu. It would also be nice to get other types of chords such as augmented, diminished, major 7th, inverted, and such, but I'm afraid more buttons would be needed for the left hand, which might make it unmanageable. I'm not enough of a musician to know which combinations could be dispensed with safely.

That's my $0.02 worth. keep up the good work!

paco
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:08 pm

One more idea. I saw

Post by paco »

One more idea.

I saw elsewhere on the forum that people want the ability to record some sort of midi events. If you get down to it, you can use that ability to arpeggiate the chords. You could have, say, two different arpeggios available by switching them with an additional button on the left edge.

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