The device we want is near at hand ..

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

Tony Scharf wrote:
> Personally, I think if your going to go whole hog and have a full
> touch display interface, why bother with a keyboard at all?   You
> could have a continuous rather than quantized pitch scale from left to
> right, and then put expression in the vertical access.  If your
> display is pressure sensitive, then you could add additional
> expression in the Z plane.  I mean, if your going to create such a
> great touch interface and throw out physical keys anyway why not go
> all the way?

This is what Eno used to say: this most misleading aspect of a synthesizer is 
the additional of a keyboard. In practice, being able to play synthetic sounds 
in the pitch domain similarly to conventional instruments has enabled the 
mapping of new acoustic territories (beyond the convenience of simulation), but 
the beauty, the timeless wonder of synthesizers, is that the are instruments 
that inhabit a world without historical reference - including keys. The mapping 
of this world to tactile reference, s a challenge not addressed by 
touch-reponsive slabs of glass, BUT, such variations on this theme may yet lead 
to fascinating insights in the world of gesture-sound relations.

Tony (HB)