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electronic practice concertina


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Several people have made various sorts of MIDI concertina, but AFAIK only for their own use, with no-one offering them commercially. That's why I've had a go myself. I now have a working Anglo keyboard which connects via a baord full of relays to an off-the-shelf contacts-to-MIDI board. It all works but needs some refinement of the ergonomics. In retrospect, considering the amount of wiring of the 70 DIL relays, it MIGHT have been easier to do more in software on a single-board computer.

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29 minutes ago, Richard Mellish said:

Several people have made various sorts of MIDI concertina, but AFAIK only for their own use, with no-one offering them commercially. That's why I've had a go myself. I now have a working Anglo keyboard which connects via a baord full of relays to an off-the-shelf contacts-to-MIDI board. It all works but needs some refinement of the ergonomics. In retrospect, considering the amount of wiring of the 70 DIL relays, it MIGHT have been easier to do more in software on a single-board computer.

Hi Richard,

 

you mentioned your project earlier, I would be very much interested in details.

 

Again, I am using reed switches which to me have proven superior in several respects over electrical contacts. Also I am glad I decided for a matrix keyboard which drastically reduces the amount of wires (yet in turn requires that you address the issue of ghosting).

 

fwiw, I attach two images of the current state of progress ( I have resurrected the project recently). I wll remove the images soon because of upload size limitations.

 

 

miditina3.jpg

miditina4.jpg

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26 minutes ago, Paul_Hardy said:

I and others have midi conversions of old instruments - see https://pghardy.net/concertina/lachenal_30566_midi/lachenal_30566_midi.html

 

There is a project on 'Concertina Nova' going on in Vietnam and New Zealand  - search for previous threads on that.

  Apparently none of them available commercially.

1 hour ago, Stephen Chambers said:

Likewise presumably not (yet) in series production, and English system rather than 40-key Anglo which is my flavour.

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2 hours ago, RAc said:

Hi Richard,

 

you mentioned your project earlier, I would be very much interested in details.

 

I have the design written up to some extent: I'll see whether it needs some improvement to be fit for passing on.

 

My practical skills are limited, but such as they are I'm better at electronics than mechanical stuff. And on the software side I can bodge up simple applets in BBC BASIC but have no experience with interfacing hardware: hence going for the off-the-shelf board to generate the MIDI commands. ON an English or Duet the switches could feed the contacts-to-MIDI board directly but I needed some system to trigger different notes on push and pull, and soon dismissed any idea of logic gates.

 

The two keyboards are PCBs carrying the switches, with handles attached, connected via a strain gauge to provide volume control and direction. The strain gauge is rigidly attached to the left-hand keyboard. I've tried various forms of mechanical connection to the right-hand keyboard and I'm not yet satisfied.

 

More later, maybe!

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13 hours ago, Paul_Hardy said:

There is a project on 'Concertina Nova' going on in Vietnam and New Zealand  - search for previous threads on that.

 

14 hours ago, Stephen Chambers said:

 

 

In fact those are both the same project.

 

There's been a lot of discussion on the topic here too on Facebook: Concertina technology

 

 

 

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I would love to see something like this.

 

I have to think that if they did a modular build then no reason you could not do any number of buttons. You could just clip in the button plate via some sort of snap connector and the buttons would all have corresponding midi note assignment. The only limitation would be the size of the shell.

 

this would be a great way to experiment with different systems at presumably low cost.

 

I also think this would be an awesome way to work up custom builds. Example, I would love to see a crane go below the c to a g.. but does it work? Or possibly bring the top end of a Hayden down a 4th, etc. 

 

it could allow for a lot of experimentation and new accepted standards.


also, as it is midi. On an English, it would be very easy to fool around different tuning. Equal, just, commas, etc.

 

I’d love to try an English where an A# and a Bb was different, but “in tune”. Or possibly have access to middle eastern Bb and B half flats, etc..

 

 

 

 

 

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It's a nice idea, but to legally sell any electronic device on a commercial basis you have to go through the EMC certification process (FCC and/or CE), which costs thousands of pounds. Presumably the Concertina Nova developers have a plan for how they are going to jump that hurdle. I suspect if there were multiple versions of the product with different keyboard arrangements they would count as multiple end products, each of which would need to be certified.

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12 hours ago, alex_holden said:

It's a nice idea, but to legally sell any electronic device on a commercial basis you have to go through the EMC certification process (FCC and/or CE), which costs thousands of pounds. Presumably the Concertina Nova developers have a plan for how they are going to jump that hurdle. I suspect if there were multiple versions of the product with different keyboard arrangements they would count as multiple end products, each of which would need to be certified.


I seriously doubt, that midi concertinas can be profitable enough to return the investment. One way to circumvent this is to release the end product in the form of downloadable plans for DIY/printable kits on etsy or other marketplace website. For a reasonable fee of course.

 

As to MIDI tinas, I’ve made one myself using Arduino+Processing, with both uni- and bi- sonoric capabilities. But since I made it with mechanical switches it didn’t last too long and I never bothered to rebuild it for hal sensors, as e-free reed instruments lack this vibrating tactile feedback of acoustic ones and playing on it just wasn’t fun. But it was a great gateway drug into Haydens for me, as I built it mostly with a goal of testing the layout for cheap.

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13 hours ago, Łukasz Martynowicz said:


I seriously doubt, that midi concertinas can be profitable enough to return the investment. One way to circumvent this is to release the end product in the form of downloadable plans for DIY/printable kits on etsy or other marketplace website. For a reasonable fee of course.

 

As to MIDI tinas, I’ve made one myself using Arduino+Processing, with both uni- and bi- sonoric capabilities. But since I made it with mechanical switches it didn’t last too long and I never bothered to rebuild it for hal sensors, as e-free reed instruments lack this vibrating tactile feedback of acoustic ones and playing on it just wasn’t fun. But it was a great gateway drug into Haydens for me, as I built it mostly with a goal of testing the layout for cheap.

I would be interested in your design, particularly what you used to sense bellows (real or virtual) pressure and direction.

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