SEQ in a midified keyboard

Design Concepts
1

Hi all!

Here’s how I think to keep my summer days busy: a Midibox SEQ and a MIDIfied 4-octave keyboard in a single unit!

The keyboard currently has no MIDI, just a crappy synthesizer and a simple chord arpeggiator. However the keys are full-size (still no velocity sensing) and there are also stereo loudspeakers and amplifier.

The button panel is fully detachable by unscrewing it, so it’s not very difficult to replace it with another one. The measures are 46x12cm, nearly a 19" size. That would be perfect for a SEQ that includes the 2x40 displays, the encoders, the Duo-Led matrix, the datawheel and some other stuff.

Here are my “critical” design ideas about which I ask your opinion:

  1. Use 16 led bars instead of the Duo-Led matrix. They have 10 leds each, I’ll use 8 to represent position and status of each track. So no button matrix for now…

  2. Use the keyboard itself to command the Seq using the Remote Control feature. I’ll add a switch to choose between “master keyboard” mode and “Seq function” mode. Then I’ll add a LED above each of the keys whose function requires it. There aren’t enough keys to map all buttons, so some “real” switches will be built in the panel.

for 1) I’m afraid the compactness of the LED bars keeps the reading difficult (surely it’ll be cool!),

for 2) I don’t know which/how many buttons really need to be pressed while playing with the master keyboard.

The image shows an incomplete CAD sketch of what I want to do.

Any comments?

Best regards, Enrico

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1346scrshotjpg7715b5a8f60d5a3269398018a265472e1247×688 78.3 KB

2

Hi Enrico,

I think that a LED matrix is less important than all buttons of the original panel layout. Sure, in general you could control all functions from the already existing keys, but it isn’t ergonomic. Especially the GP buttons below the LCDs are important, they have different functions depending on the menu context - so, you have to see the text exactly above the button, otherwise your sequencer will be nearly unusuable, as it is too time consuming to find the right key to the appr. function which is displayed on LCD, which is far away!

I think that the only buttons of MBSEQ which maybe could be removed are Metronome and Scrub - everything else is heavily used during a session

Best Regards, Thorsten.

3

Thanks TK… I forgot to say I wanted to remap the keys so that the GP buttons are the white ones aligned to the LCD text (e.g. GP1..8 = B-1..B-2, assuming the 1st note on the left is C-1). So - I suppose - with some practice I can press the corresponding GP “key” without even look at it. Do you think this can increase the ergonomy a little bit?

(I hear my auto-responder saying “why don’t you try by yourself?”)

Best regards,

Enrico