Music Thing: The Chromatone 312
posted March 4th 2005 2:34PM
This Japanese girl is playing a Chromatone 312, which has a Janko Keyboard. It's got 72 keys for every 12 on a normal keyboard, and they're all white. It's terrifying. Imagine 3 unmarked QWERTY keyboards strapped together and you're still not there.
The keyboard layout was patented in 1882 by Hungarian mathematician/musician Paul von Janko. The theory is that it’s
much easier to play – chord shapes are the same in every key, and the closer-spaced keys make it possible to play
faster. But, like decimal time, and the Dvorak computer
keyboard, the world of Janko is divided between a tiny group of passionate believers and an enormous mass of people
who’ve never really given it a second thought.
You might think that if an idea hasn’t taken off after 23 years, it’s never going to take off. But the Janko keyboard
was patented 123 years ago, and the Chromatone 312 was launched in Japan late last year. Some ideas just won’t go
away.
Lots more info on the Janko keyboard layout available at this site (including a CD with stereolithography files for prototyping a Janko module that can be fitted to an Evolution MK-149 MIDI keyboard). I'd love to get my hands on a Janko MIDI controller...
http://monxmood.free.fr/janko.htm
This is another instance where Futureman of the Flecktones has this thing beat. RoyEl has a keyboard that is based on the periodic table of elements.
Your music guy should just do articles about Roy Wooten every week.
Playing a standard keyboard is hard enough. Who would want to buy this?
holy crap! I cant even play a regular keyboard and hit the same note twice, where is C on that thing, look away for a split second and try again, yup, good luck.
Oh, I really want it.
But Jake is right....first thing I would do is break out a permanent marker.
Scary.
But I can't wait until this is a Keytar MIDI controller.
that is truly sadistic...
In the one-color sense, the Continuum takes this to its scariest limit:
http://www.hakenaudio.com/Continuum/
But it's also easier to play (some of the videos on the site are stunning).
One minor point - if that pic had appeared on a US website, would you have used the phrase, "This American girl"? She could be from anywhere - ethnicity isn't determined by the country you live in.
Smoosh would love one of these... http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=mb&air_date=2/25/05&tmplt_type=show
that girl doesn't look japanese!
Yeah she looks like Chris Kattan.
guys..if you have seen video clips of what some japanese teens can do with their fancy DJ arcade game machines, it wont be long before one of them starts playing with a keyboard like that
I heard Sony was going to use a mini version of tis for the portable KB on the PSP
:-P
"Playing a standard keyboard is hard enough. Who would want to buy this?" In a way this is easier to learn than standard; imagine having to only learn one major scale instead of twelve...
I would buy it. Thought about this layout a lot and made a paper model--it works. I would have only 4 rows to simplify a little---->two rows are repeated---->no need for another repetition.