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?

  • rhythmicotter@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m a pianist, and pianists are often very particular about how musical keyboards feel. There doesn’t appear to be a very large DIY community around it. Getting a digital keyboard to feel good has a lot of elements. It seems that it’s very expensive to design and manufacture a music keyboard, let alone to do it modularly as the keyboard community has. I would expect it to require a lot of compromises that I wouldn’t be willing to deal with except as a hobby project.

    Synths, on the other hand, have a HUGE DIY community and that sometimes extends to making keyboards. But for me, it rarely seems worth it to fabricate a keyboard when a MIDI controller with MIDI cables or MIDI over USB can be had as cheaply as $50 or to have a really well done one for under $150.

    I’d be more interested in modding an existing keyboard than I would creating my own from scratch.

    I found this list of links related to diy instrument and synth making in case you’re interested. https://sdiy.info/wiki/Online_resources

    This is such a niche topic that you should probably seek out a traditional forum. Also, check out Look Mum No Computer for some inspiration.