![]() Wicki-Hayden just makes more sense to me. I like those Opal keyboards, but I'm not a big fan of the harmonic table layout, personally. I remember seeing the terpstra during my initial surge of interest into isomorphic key layouts, and it seemed amazing, but I was sad they never got around to actually producing it. I find its just the thing when i am stuck in the writing process and looking for new ideas.Īt some point i want to splurge on one of those Opal ones, the only thing i find a bit limiting about this and the axis keyboards is the lack of aftertouch. I have an axis49 in my setup and i do use it frequently. How else are you going to get more than a piano's worth of keys under each hand in a footprint smaller than a lot of two-octave keyboards?Ĭhinard wrote:I just tripped across this today and it looks rather interesting If you want to go a little further with it and really push it to the limit, be prepared for a little struggle, but plenty of reward in the long run. If all you're going to use it for is harmonic table playing, you're set. Considering that most other isomorphic keyboard solutions cost at least 5-10x as much, it's a pretty fantastic value. The software remapping took some time as well, but now that I know how to route all my virtual MIDI information, I can have the whole thing set up from a cold start in less than five minutes.īasically what it boils down to is this: it's not the perfect instrument, BUT, for a 98-key, velocity sensitive MIDI controller (of any kind), you could do a lot worse for $250. The firmware update was a nightmare (talk to me or check on the c-thru forums before attempting it!), but that was once-and-done-forever. This took me about a week and a half to figure out completely, but now that I have it all set up, it's no problem at all. Then you have to figure out how best to remap your keyboards in software and retain the features you want (if you want to play separate instruments on each hand, for instance). They default to Midi channel 1, so to get them recognized as separate keyboards, you have to update the firmware on one so it transmits on channel 2. Neither of these were planned applications from the beginning, so the workarounds are decidedly on the "hack" side of things. The biggest issues I have are with running two at once, as well as remapping. After a few months of playing, it felt right. The software I use to remap the Axis 49s can actually adjust the velocity curve as well, which makes the velocity even more usable. It's definitely a different feel compared to a traditional keyboard, but that's to be expected. I haven't found the velocity sensing to be bad at all. ![]() I use a Max patch by a fellow named Ken Rushton (I can't remember the name of the software offhand) and it works exactly as I want it to. The advantage of this is that for any given scale or chord, I need only to learn a single fingering, as opposed to twenty-four(!) unique fingerings on a traditional piano keyboard (one per hand per root note). I have a pair of them, remapped with a Wicki/Hayden key layout and mirror images of each other. Let me know if you have any more questions about remapping these guys I went through it all about a year ago and can probably make it a bit easier on you, especially if you use a Mac. There are a few patches/software already written explicitly to remap the Axis keyboard, one of which is the Relayer app above (which is geared toward microtonality). ![]() Then you can route it through a max patch or other software to remap it however you'd like. Basically, instead of tying you to the harmonic table layout (which complicates remapping because of the repeated note pattern), it simply gives each button a unique value from 1-98. There's no native support for remapping per se, but C-thru offered this compromise measure to us tinkerers: selfless mode. Wish I had seen this thread back in July. but having something akin to one of those in proper (affordable) hardware would really open my wallet in a HURRY. I think I might just stick with Orphium and Thumbjam. Meanwhile the 64 is incredibly pricy for me. But crap velocity sensing is pretty worrying. I have some scala-compatible synths that mean that the futzy lack of reprogammability (srsly I do wonder how modern manufacturers feel they don't need to write one little app to rewrtite note assignments on midioverusb controllers) isn't necessarily a deal-breaker. ![]() They're cheap enough that if I could get one used I'd do it in a heartbeat, but getting one new, after paying shipping to Hong Kong, if I decided I didn't like it it's a bit more of a loss. I don't give a rat's ass about the hexagonal thirds and fifths, really, I just want to have all those keys so close, and velocity sensitive. I'm a little torn because actually my main goal is having so many keys so close together. ![]()
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