Keyboardion

I had another idea for a musical instrument, and I think it worked out pretty well.

It’s sort of a cross between a chromatic button accordion and a keytar. Or maybe it’s a digital Chapman Stick… except that it’s more polyphonic and tuned completely differently.

I don’t know. It’s kind of a new thing, I think.

The chromatic button accordion is probably the oldest and certainly the most popular isomorphic keyboard instrument in the world, so it’s not that much of a new thing. But as far as I know, the keyboardion is the first instrument that adapts its tuning to this particular form factor.1

All of the digital isomorphic keyboards that I know about have more of a square aspect ratio,2 and they’re usually designed to be played like a piano or a concertina: both hands symmetrically engaged with the keyboard.

But I was really curious how this asymmetry would feel: the left hand probably plays in the bass register, so it can accompany the melody with chords. The left hand is pretty good at forming chords on a guitar. Maybe it’ll work on this weird keytar thing? Let’s find out.

Okay so what is this

The note layout looks like this:

I’ve highlighted a single full octave. Why did I highlight an octave starting at C♯? I dunno; that’s kind of just where I happened to draw this. You can slide that anywhere left or right; you could transpose this so that C is on the top row without changing the relative layout.

The important thing to note are the intervals: moving down and to the right goes up a semitone. Moving up and to the right goes up a whole tone. Moving directly to the right goes up a minor third.

This matches a “B-system” accordion, which the internet tells me is common in Russia. It also says that most Western chromatic button accordions use the “C-system” layout, which is the same thing but flipped upside down:

No idea if that’s true. I tried both, and found the intervals on the B-system more comfortable for common chord shapes on the left hand. For example, here’s…