On 16 Apr 2009, at 02:33, Kassen wrote:

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There are problems with using MIDI-patches as they may not be able to produce intermediate pitches - pitch bends en E12 may also change tone color.

Yes, I see. Fortunately with ChucK you can implement pitch-bend (if you'd like to use it) in any way you see fit.

There is a MIDI Tuning Standard (MTS) which allows one to set frequencies, but it is not widely implemented. And even that ignores the problem of scale stretch.

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Actually, I only played piano accordion. I was led to the diagram when trying to find something better than the E12 buttons.

Me too, and now, years after I quit, I still have a inclination to want to put musical keyboards vertical on the rare occasions that I play them :¬).

There is the Korg nanoKey which resembles accordion piano keys somewhat, and the Roland virtual accordions, but they are a bit ore pricey. Otherwise, the key map was known (in a mirror reversed version) in the 19th century, by Helmholtz and Bosanquet.

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I myself favour the exact opposite in keyboards; a longer key- travel with a distinct "click" (like the IBM Model "M"). Odd, maybe as I used to play the accordion and still have one stored.

There are different styles, but the sensitive firm touch is good for full-grown accordions when playing rapid music (like Balkan music).

When playing buttons, the hand must be m,ore curved, and one cannot use much force. So I think more sensitive keys would be better for that.

Oh, yes, I wouldn't dream of using the style of keyboard I like for typing on a accordion.

Composers use MIDI keyboards for typing when entering the score (into programs like Finale and Sibelius).

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For your purposes the best tip I could probably give is that the "midi" section of the examples also touches on polyphony. I think you will benefit from looking at those examples as you are clearly after chords.

Perhaps, if one can avoid that microtonal tone color problem.

Without pitch-bend I'd still assume you would want your keyboard to be polyphonic. I don't think those examples even go into pitch-bend but I might be mistaken. I meant that those examples will show you how to do voice-cycling which is a rather useful technique as it will avoid "garbage" in ChucK.

Yes, thank you, it will take me some time to get to those examples. On keyboards, I think even when playing a single line legato, there will be overlap of keys. Once (two decades ago) I had a MIDI synth with limited simultaneous notes, and with too few sound generators assigned, the audio would be truncated. Hans