A new way to play and display music
1. This new digital musical instrument has two parts:
Please see the enclosed image in the link.
1.1 The keyboard circle, which shows and lets you play the notes on a circular piano keyboard laid out on a clockface:
A clockface:
............12.............. ......11............1...... ..10....................2.. 9..........................3 ..8.....................4... .....7..............5....... .............6...............
Muzipad II circular symmetric piano keyboard:
............D.............. ......X............X....... ..C....................E.. B..........................F ..X.....................X... .....A..............G....... .............X...............
To play notes you press in the note's area. Like a piano keyboard multiple notes can be played together. You can slide the fingers like on a violin to create a legato effect or pitch bends. See the details section.
During playback, the played notes light up and an arrow is drawn from one note to the next, with the arrows spiraling out as the song advances.
See details for more than one octave in a single Keyboard Circle.
The Keyboard circle is also good for playing and showing Chords Please read about that in the details section.
1.2 The Sequence Shapes:
To show the sequence of music a diamond shape is used for 4/4 quarter notes, or a triangle for 3/4 quarter notes per measure.
The notes are marked as small Keyboard Circles, and the duration is marked with arrows along the diamond shaped walls.
See details for the case of more than one measure per Sequence Shape, and for multiple notes played in a Keyboard Circle.
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2. ******* Details *******
2.1. Details of the keyboard circle:
2.1.1 Playing the keyboard: You can play this note circle keyboard with your fingers similar to playing a piano.
2.1.2 Note effects: You can drag the keys or shake your finger for legato and tremolo effects, or for causing an effect on the sound like pitch-bend or strumming. In cases where two effects are possible, like playing individual notes or bending the tones when the fingers pass over multiple notes, you can set the gesture that will cause the effect, for example two fingers will cause a strumming sound while one finger will cause the pitch bend.
2.1.3 Spiraling notes and octaves: The notes are marked in a spiral (see picture in link)
For example, the low D (at hour 12) which is the first and lowest note in the Keyboard is the closest to the center. Each following note is a bit further from the center. The next D note, an octave higher, is immediately above the lower D and further away from the center, in effect creating a spiral shape.
You could have up to five octaves inside the note circle.
2.2 Chords in the Keyboard Circle
The chord is shown as a triangle.
In single-finger chord-input mode the circle's outer cycle is for major chords and the inner circle is for minor chords. By pressing two notes together you can create a 6th, a 7th. a dim, or an augmented chord.
2.3 Details for the Sequence Shapes:
Notes played are shown as smaller brightly colored dots on a Keyboard circle with the black keys shown outside the circle. The notes themselves are marked as bright dots, also outside the circle.
Chords are shown as a triangle correctly aligned inside the Keyboard Circle. And in it is the chord name.
For two measures we have two diamond shapes one inside the other. We start from the inside diamond spiraling out. Each edge, starting from the top of the diamond (North Up) is the beginning of a quarter note duration.
Each played note is shown by a separate small Keyboard Circle. The duration is shown with an arrow along the diamond shape.
If several notes are played together and their durations are all the same, they can be all shown in one single Keyboard Circle.
So for example, if four single quarter notes are played in sequence inside the measure, a note is marked at each edge of the diamond (N W S E) with its duration marked with an arrow that spirals out to the next measure. See image.
2.4 Playing chords:
2.4.1 Single-finger mode: Pressing a note on the inner part of the circle creates a minor chord for that note. And on the outside, a major chord.
2.4.2 In manual chord entry mode the chord is recognized according to the notes you play, shown with its triangle and chord name.
2.5 Multiple Keyboard Circles:
2.5.1 Left and right hand: Two Keyboard Circles may be used for playing live or recording, one for the left hand and one for the right.
2.5.2 Also, several Keyboard Circles can be used for several octaves. They could be right to left like a piano or laid out in a spiral shape like the petals of a flower.
2.6 Multiple Sequence Shapes
Multiple shapes can be shown one for each measure or phrase. They can be laid out in a square grid, or like everything else, in a diamond-shaped layout spiraling out. (Or a triangle in the case of triangular 3/4 measures. )
During playback perhaps the UX would be showing a dynamic Sequence Shap with the current measure on top and the rest spiraling back and away into the middle.
2.7 Transposing and Setting Scale
2.7.1 Transposing: When transposing the music, either the notes are left in place and the keyboard is turned, or the keyboard stays constant and the notes are all moved.
2.7.2 Setting a scale will gray out some of the keys.
2.8 AI and autocompletion.
2.8.1 Suggested notes: If you are playing with a "guide" track, or with a preconceived chord progression, or you are playing chords, the next notes or chords will be suggested automatically by highlighting and coloring the notes to be played.
2.8.2 Mistake prevention: In Safe Mode notes or chords that are irrelevant will be grayed out.-- pashute, Jan 18 2024 Muzipad II illustration https://docs.google...58/edit?usp=sharing [pashute, Jan 18 2024] Circle music maker The original idea [pashute, Jan 18 2024] Muzipad - a musicircle Version I of the Muzipad idea told in an unclear way. Hopefully this time I got it better [pashute, Jan 18 2024] 1. This is clearer but it is still not clear what it is for
2. The triangle drawn on the diagram does not make sense, since the interval of a minor 3rd, the interval of a major 3rd and the interval back down a 5th are joined by the three lines - what do the lines mean? Is the third line meant to point up a 4th to d an octave higher? The diagram does not show this. I think octave ambiguity is going to be a big problem with this thing.
3. You mention wiggling a finger to bend notes, implying a continuum of pitch space, yet you also mention keys being greyed out implying a discrete pitch space.
4. The rhythm part of this doesn't make any sense to me at all. In normal 2D music notation, most systems seem to operate as a kind of graph, for example staff notation can be read as having time on the x axis and pitch level on the y axis. This system seems to use a polar co-ordinate system with pitch level in both the radial and the circumfrential directions (giving rise to a spiral form).-- pocmloc, Jan 18 2024 1. As stated in the subtitle this idea is meant to play music - as a digital musical instrument. And also stated in the subtitle, to display music being played on a computer.
2a. The triangle runs from Re (D) to Fa (F) then to La (A) which is the D major chord. After watching a few or playing a few (in either "single finger" chord mode, or by selecting the chord root notes, you will begin noticing the distinct difference between major, minor, and other chords.
2b. The chord is only the general chord the exact fingering of that chord with octaves considered will be marked by the individual notes in the spirals. So octaves are not a problem.
3 Continuous or discrete "glide" between notes can be controlled as in ThumbJam and many other programs with usually 3 kinds of glide: Step, discrete per note like in a piano, Free like in a violin all along the guide between notes, and glide with a glide-rate setting for the speed of gliding between notes.
4. The spiral shape still preserves four what do you call them? sides, (in Hebrew they are called "ribs". Each rib is the length of 1 quarter note, i.e. one quarter of the measure (or a third of the measure in a triangle), you can easily see what should be played, and if you are playing you can easily move along for that duration. This would be useful for editing it like in a piano roll, except the lengths are not the same because the inner spiral has shorter lines, but still the duration is quite clear from the shape, and easy enough to control.-- pashute, Jan 21 2024 random, halfbakery