Comment by bluGill
1 year ago
I've been trying to design a keyboard that can be used with the feet - something that I can play like dance dance revolution, while playing something else with my hands (mandolin), thus making me a one man band. Figuring out what a good layout would be is the first step and so far everything I've thought of either lacks useful notes, is too big to reach useful notes, or the keys are too close together. If anyone has ideas on how to do this I'd love help. (or better yet do this as I don't have must time to work on it)
Organists have been using foot-keyboards (somehow) for hundreds of years.
I'm personally fond of this one though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_Taurus
See also this classic instrument, familiar from the late great FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_Piano
An organ pedalboard MIDI controller would be an off-the-shelf solution albeit expensive. You could hook it up to a drum rack in a DAW in order to remap the pedals to a useful layout.
With a foot activated MIDI controller the number of keys will always be rather limited. Therefore, I think that the virtual layout should be customized to the music you play or even for each song. E.g. you could only map notes of a certain scale and range in order to save space.
If you consider building something custom; I have found that outputting to hardware MIDI from an Arduino is delightfully simple. (The hard part on my own project is finding motivation for figuring out how to read velocity from piezos and isolating vibrations.)
Organ pedalboards require sitting down and so are not really what I want.
The number of keys is the real problem - I don't want to be playing a single note in one octave, I want to play my chord progression and that means I need separate buttons for the major, minor, 7th (which 7th...) for the chords that go with the song.
A medium number of keys could work out by using a custom layout for each song as many songs don't use too many chords. Similar to tuning timpani for each song.
Have you looked at existing MIDI foot controllers? E.g. Behringer FCB1010 or Yamaha MFC10 or Roland FC-300.
I've messed with using a 9-button dance pad as an impromptu midi controller - gives you a full octave and you use the center square as a "rest", but I can't imagine trying to use it in a live setting - it would be like trying to play a guitar in a bouncy castle.
That idea was my inspiration. However I want more than 9 notes. In particular I want major, minor, and 7th chords based as well as the root note.
Is that possible, given that you only have two feet?
Are you looking for a mode which allows you to select a chord rather than just a single note? (One foot for the root, and the other selects single/major/minor/etc)?
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Yeah totally get it. You'd almost need a "mod" key or a wireless controller to turn on a chord mode similar to how arranger keyboards work...
Keith McMillen Instruments makes a one-octave foot controller that can send note data [1]. It was the most compact and affordable MIDI foot controller of this type that I was able to find when I looked a few years back.
[1] https://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/12-step/
I'd probably be thinking foot pedals and chording if I needed a lot of options.
Have you seen Electones?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electone
Piano layout is suprisingly robust, just use a bigger size key like organists do.
OP needs the walking piano from the movie "Big". That'll give them a workout.