I’ve never been much of a musical person. But my kid was playing with a toy piano the other day, pressing buttons and whatnot. I lay my fingers on the keyboard and thought “hmmm… kinda like the home row”.
So my question to the community: have any of you built musical keyboards? Did you post a blog or guide? At first I was thinking a choc switch with a custom long cap that was held off a pivot point at one end and attached to the switch at the other. But musical keyboards vary sound depending on how you press the note. So maybe Hall effect?
Anyway, keen to hear of any adventures down this road by others?
Both my in-laws are pianists and we’ve talked about this before - the consensus was that the mechanisms for typing keyboards and musical keyboards are very different. With a (good) musical keyboard, you don’t just care if a switch was pressed, you also care about how quickly and forcefully it was pressed - this can significantly impact the volume, pitch and tone of a note.
High end electric keyboards go as far as simulating resonances between different strings - vibration in one string can induce vibration in its neighbours depending on the exact frequencies, the geometry of the instrument, the materials it’s made from etc etc.
Instruments like a piano have existed for more than a century, and very well financed people have spent a lot of time and energy optimising every single part - if you think mech key people get pedantic about things like what material the plate is made out of and how it’s mounted, go talk to a high end musician - they make us look super relaxed