Jammer keyboard
A jammer is a new category of musical instrument characterized by at least one isomorphic keyboard and thumb-operated and/or motion-sensing expressive controls. The instrument is designed to be easy to learn, easy to play, very expressive, and to enable the exploration of Dynamic Tonality.
Research suggests that the combination of thumb-controls and internal motion sensors could give jammers more expressive potential than other polyphonic musical instruments such as the piano, guitar, and accordion. Isomorphic keyboards similar to those used in a jammer have been shown to accelerate the rate at which students grasp otherwise-abstract concepts in music theory.
History
Origin of jammer and Thummer instruments
The jammer was invented by Jim Plamondon in September 2003, whereupon he founded to develop a "Thummer™-brand jammer" and bring it to market. The "Thum" name was to emphasize the unique thumb-control feature. Prototype Thummers were produced, but the company spent too much money on researching internal motion sensors and polyphonic aftertouch, so lacked the resources to put the Thummer into production. It disbanded a year before the founding of Kickstarter, which could have solved this problem.Open source jammer
Although not currently under commercial development, an ongoing open-source hardware design project seeks to produce a royalty-free reference design for jammers, based on Thumtronics' prototypes.Do It Yourself (handmade) jammers
Hobbyists are making . Recent availability of adaptable commercial keyboard controllers, especially the from C-Thru Music, has spurred innovation and many functioning jammers have been built.Software for their construction through the modification of commercially available instruments is now available.
Touchscreen based jammers
The many multitouch touchscreen products running Android or iOS, particularly tablet devices, can be adapted to be utilised as jammers. The dynamic display allows for key sizes to be easily adjusted to preference.Origin and usage of the ''jammer'' name
Just as Kleenex is a trademarked brand of facial tissue, and the Stratocaster is a trademarked brand of electric guitar, the Thummer was intended to be a trademarked brand of "a new kind of musical instrument." The term jammer was introduced to give that "new kind of musical instrument" a generic, non-trademarked name. It was coined by Jim Plamondon, founder of Thumtronics, and first used when the "Thummer-brand jammer" was publicly announced on December 15, 2005, in Perth, Western Australia.Features
- At least one 2-dimensional keyboard in a hexagonal array; preferably, one for each hand. The keys of the left-hand instrument are mirror-imaged to those on the right, to match the mirroring of one's hands. This speeds learning the instrument, as a skill learned in one hand can transfer to the other hand.
- Notes assigned to the array using the ergonomically efficient Wicki-Hayden note layout.
- Preferably one or more thumb-operated expressive control, e.g. the thumb-operated joysticks found on seventh-generation video game controllers, touchpads, or other expressive controls, such as internal motion-sensors, foot-pedals, breath controllers, etc.
Advantages over a standard keyboard
Limitations and disadvantages over a standard keyboard
- The distance between chromatic intervals is greater
- Not all chord inversions are easy to finger
- Chromatic scales take longer to learn, although they are easy to play
- Harder to learn than the piano in C major
- No teachers or body of pedagogy for the jammer
- Fingering techniques are still being developed
- No formal theory of play has been developed, although one is under development, and related to standard jazz "jamming" techniques.
- High cost of hexagonal keyboards relative to the standard keyboard
Differences from the Thummer design ideal
Because no jammers are commercially available, jammer-players must build "do-it-yourself" home-made jammers. The , now in the public domain, are useful as a design goal, because of the many novel features they describe.How jammers are being made
- The computer qwerty keyboard is a nearly hexagonal array of keys, so can be mapped into Wicki/Hayden layout through software applications such as the Transformsynth and Bomes midi translator. However limitations of the qwerty keyboard limit this usefulness.
- There are commercially available isomorphic instruments with an applicable hexagonal array of keys. Commercially available keyboard instruments that do not use the Wicki/Hayden note layout but use USB midi are modified via re-mapping software for the .
- In the past, experimental keyboards have been made by hand, as shown right.
- Alternate input devices such as the Korg Nano series are most often used to give a jammer player more expressive potential. Game console joysticks have been found to offer excellent expression. Experimentally, a hand-mounted, thumb operated control has been found to be superior, as it allows full mobility to the hand.
- After-touch has not been explored for jammers. Motion sensing has yet to be explored by jammer players because of its lack of accessibility and/or applicability to expressive control in its current forms.
- Adding an arm brace to the jammers has yet to be explored, due to the lack of feasible motion sensing capabilities.
Design Rationale
Octaves ascend vertically, increasing the playable interval sizes, easing chord inversions, and greatly reducing the time needed to move to a new note or chord.
Ergonomic Factors
Although no one is yet expert on a jammer, Fitts law predicts that the jammer will be very significantly faster to play that a conventional keyboard.The expected speed increase is or 75% less time to find and press the average key. Since playing an instrument is always a speed vs accuracy tradeoff, a novice player should be able to play more accurately, while a trained player should be able to play with more precise timing.
Commercially available
Some hexagonal isomorphic keyboards are commercially available:- , uses the note-layout
- , uses the Melodic Table note-layout
- , uses the note-layout, shown in Figure 1 above
- Mobile applications: and convert iOS devices into concertinas and jammers. For Android, there are and the opensource .
Software
- , free UK site containing Java, Flash, and PC applications to enable users to play their alpha-numeric keyboard to sound 12 equal tempered pitches using Wicki/Hayden or Jankó keyboard layout.
- provides a Jammer among other isomorphic layouts to iPad users.
- On Android, there is the free and the opensource Hexiano.
- provides free Dynamic Tonality synthesizers, the TransformSynth and 2032, as well as a realtime tonality mapper which maps the QWERTY keyboard to the wicki-hayden note layout and allow for the dynamic change in both tuning and timbre along a smooth continuum.
- allows the user to use custom isomorphic layouts as well as scales. For Jammer layout, choose "Right Facing Steps: 2, Up/Right Facing Steps: 7", and a 12-note.scl scale.