Mobile Clavier : New Music Keyboard for Flexible Key Transpose

Yoshinari Takegawa, and Tsutomu Terada

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

Musical performers need to show off their virtuosity for selfexpression and communicate with other people. Therefore, they are prepared to perform at any time and anywhere. However, a musical keyboard of 88 keys is too large and too heavy to carry around. When a portable keyboard that is suitable for carrying around is played over a wide range, the notes being played frequently cause the diapason of the keyboard to protrude. It is common to use Key Transpose in conventional portable keyboards, which shifts the diapason of the keyboard. However, this function creates several problems such as the feeling of discomfort from the misalignment between the keying positions and their output sounds. Therefore, the goal of our study is to construct Mobile Clavier, which enables the diapason to be changed smoothly. Mobile Clavier resolves the problems with Key Transpose by having black keys inserted between any two side-by-side white keys. This paper also discusses how effective Mobile Clavier was in an experiment conducted using professional pianists. We can play music at any time and anywhere with Mobile Clavier.

Citation:

Yoshinari Takegawa, and Tsutomu Terada. 2007. Mobile Clavier : New Music Keyboard for Flexible Key Transpose. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177255

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Takegawa2007,
 abstract = {Musical performers need to show off their virtuosity for selfexpression and communicate with other people. Therefore, they are prepared to perform at any time and anywhere. However, a musical keyboard of 88 keys is too large and too heavy to carry around. When a portable keyboard that is suitable for carrying around is played over a wide range, the notes being played frequently cause the diapason of the keyboard to protrude. It is common to use Key Transpose in conventional portable keyboards, which shifts the diapason of the keyboard. However, this function creates several problems such as the feeling of discomfort from the misalignment between the keying positions and their output sounds. Therefore, the goal of our study is to construct Mobile Clavier, which enables the diapason to be changed smoothly. Mobile Clavier resolves the problems with Key Transpose by having black keys inserted between any two side-by-side white keys. This paper also discusses how effective Mobile Clavier was in an experiment conducted using professional pianists. We can play music at any time and anywhere with Mobile Clavier.},
 address = {New York City, NY, United States},
 author = {Takegawa, Yoshinari and Terada, Tsutomu},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177255},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Portable keyboard, Additional black keys, Diapason change },
 pages = {82--87},
 title = {Mobile Clavier : New Music Keyboard for Flexible Key Transpose},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2007/nime2007_082.pdf},
 year = {2007}
}