I needed one of these today.

The individual components are already available; midi software, ready made circuit boards and just schematics.

What I offer is a 'keyboard assembly' with built in features for "finger drumming". The keyboard's leading edge, a tragic waste of space now has up to 5 large 'coin sized' pads for your digits to get down with the beat in between anno~s or page downloads.

The drum heads are soft silicon membranes over piezo crystal switches. The piezo switches are tactile type allowing .75 mm of travel upon impact. The silicon pad absorbs the thwacking sound of fingers hitting the pads while transfering the motion to the traveling piezo switch. Digi-drum keyboards use no adittional desk top space. Each head's tone has mutiple voices for a richer audio experience. Simple.

tikki tikki tikki tikki tikki tah tah...
-- hollajam, Oct 13 2002

Fruityloops http://www.fruityloops.com/
...can play any sample file (wav), generator (Fruityloops soft- synth), VSTi & DXi) or midi instrument you feed it. The house kid uses his comp's keyboard to great effect to bake this idea. [thumbwax, Oct 14 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

This with a violin sound as I nervously whip my mouse cursor back and forth would be nice. +
-- FarmerJohn, Oct 13 2002


Wonderful Farmer John. The mouse signals the "bowing" while notes are activated by regular keys. Though this deviates from the built in design idea I present here it would sure make a great accessory feature in the accompanying software.
-- hollajam, Oct 13 2002


Thank you, thumbwax. Yes the processing exists.

There is still no keyboard though with such thoughtful placement and design of tactile mini-drum pads, so I am still left wanting...

Isn't that the mother of invention?
-- hollajam, Oct 14 2002



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