Terpstra Keyboard

I play the lumatone (https://www.lumatone.io/) which is very similar.

I personally love it, especially as I like to do a lot of improv in various tunings, and the layout makes transposing and thinking about structure so much easier than a traditional keyboard. The terpstra seems similar, not sure what their selling point is over the lumatone.

Edit: oh, it seems that the lumatone is the commercialized version essentially. Great hardware, can reccomend!

For folks wondering wtf is going on with the key layout, this is what's called an isomorphic ("same shape") layout. The idea is you can learn how to play a certain grouping of notes relative to each other, and then you can play that same grouping anywhere on the keyboard relative to some other note. So for example a C major triad is the notes C-E-G played together. And a D major triad is the notes D-F#-A played together. If you learn the major triad shape on this keyboard, then you can move to the note C and play that shape and get a C major triad, or move to the note D and play that exact same shape and get a D major triad.

This is different from a linear layout like a traditional piano. Note above that the D major triad has an F# which means it is played on one of the piano's black keys, while the C major triad does not have a sharp, which means it is played entirely on the white keys. You have to keep track of which particular chord you are playing in order to know whether you need a black key or a white key. This means the shape you play to get each major triad is different, so a traditional piano is not an isomorphic ("same shape") layout.

Guitars are also isomorphic (when all the strings being played are fretted) and may be easier to think about. If you imagine fretting the lowest two strings at the 5th fret and playing them both, and then moving your finger up one fret on both strings, the interval between each of those two groupings of notes is the same - you've moved them each up one step, but the difference between them stays the same based on however the strings are tuned. Similar to this keyboard, on a guitar you can learn the shape of a (fully fretted) major triad, and then move that shape anywhere on the neck to play any major triad.

Accordion bass buttons work the same way. Looks confusing if you don't have any idea what's going on, but it's actually very intuitive and easy to learn and play.

French music researcher and youtuber “Mathémusiques” also has a weird experiment with 2D graphs for music notes

Here a simulation

https://thetonnetz.com/

For those just now encountering isomorphic keyboards, my experience with them is purely in software on a tablet, courtesy of a pair of extremely tangential links that I encountered a while back. While esoteric, they're what have made me wish that I was wealthy enough to get a physical isomorphic panel for a hobby — but as a non-pro and student, it's not yet time, so software it is. There are various websites and apps that implement them — either isomorphic or microtonal + either keyboard or midi should locate them for whatever platform is of interest. And then, for two things completely tangential:

Physicists may particularly appreciate that someone made a distorted isomorphic keyboard layout that implements 5-limit just intervals and it ends up being a quasicrystal. While not a true isomorphic, it certainly draws connections that I don't otherwise get to talk about on HN much, and if one were to take the 7-JI 3-D quasicrystal and combine it with a webcam theremin, I'm sure the results would be entertaining. https://old.reddit.com/r/microtonal/comments/1l1m0e6/quasiis...

Caftaphata is one woman's ten year project to create a conlang ('constructed language') that converts human mandibular positions into 5-D chords and builds a tetris-block language of phonetic rules out of them. There are maybe twenty videos posted so far presenting each stage of the grammar and construction patterns. Each chord is a word constructed by plain rules. Studying these videos since they launched a year ago is what led me to learn about isomorphic keyboards. The accompanying instructional videos also have the distinction of being narrated fully in Lisatopian (the creator's first conlang), so not only sound but also subtitles end up being required. This is the Caftaphata intro video; 5 minutes, sound is mandatory and may feel dissonant at times: https://youtu.be/cMnuMjXeHrY

Finally, a keyboard that’s perfect for Emacs.

I found this ubder the Play it now! page. Funny name collision with the Scala programming language :)

https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

Why is it redirecting to the website of a Romanian IT company?

Edit: it seems it's doing so on Firefox, but not on Edge.

Been a while since I've seen an HTTP-only website

https://polyend.com/keys/

A recent product concept, computer keyboard with function keys arranged like piano keys.

Also intersects music, technology and keyboard layout, but from a different angle.

Would name it "Terpstr Keyboard"; sounds even more 2010s.

HTTP insecure in 2026. Wild!

Reminds me of the chromatic button accordion.

I don't know why, but I'm thinking songs to Moog to.

This looks like the Go of keyboards. If I hit the keys encircling a group of other keys maybe I can flip their color 8-|

[flagged]

[dead]