A Guide To The Harmonic Table
03Jan09
Music Science Guy has published a guide to the Harmonic Table system – an alternate layout for music keyboards:
This is a “twice folded scale” whereupon we have notes evenly spaced out, in intervals called a major second, and fold them twice, first by octave, and then again, so that the octave family of harmonics(1, 2, 4, 8, 16, & 32), the green circles, are next to the Perfect Fifth family(3, 6, 12, 24), the Red circles.
This is the basis of the Wicki-Hayden (Wicki for short) key layout and design of the jammer keyboard. One big advantage is that one can press the two notes most used together in music with a single finger straddling the two.
If you’re puzzled by how these unique key layouts work, check it out.
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I actually created a mouse controlled replica of the the C-thru Axis (a harmonic table keyboard) using processing. It can currently control any midi device, I’m working on setting it up as a touchscreen application and adding some additional features. You can find it here:
http://www.grantmuller.com/processing-harmonictable-part-2/