The Forum Software is blocking me, so i attached ANOTHER addition to the end of this post. There are three now.
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Intuitive Instruments Exquis
New ( on Kickstarter ) hexagonal isomorphic keyboard with software, and as MPE controller. Quite inexpensive, especially with the KS discount.
Company is calling themselves Intuitive Instruments they used to be called Dualo. This product is called Exquis.
ADDED : Came across this video. It’s in French, with subtitles, but no translation needed for happy laughter. The video is from the synth maker, but done by Knarf host of Les Sondiers. It gives some clue what this might be like to play — looks fun though this is only an early prototype. With the selected scale lit, it’s reasonably easy to pick out shapes and move those chords about. Feels like the alternative form, might lead to happy accidents.
No clicky encoders please.
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The Hotz Box
It is a touch sensitive panel combined with complex computer based software to generate MIDI. The first of these goes back to 1988, that ran on an Atari 1040ST, and was sold by Atari. It was created by Jimmy Hotz, with assistance of Mick Fleetwood, of Fleetwood Mac. There is a current version that runs on a PC under Windows.
The software has a lot of different capabilities, but at base it allows the player to use one of an array of keyboard shapes, shown above, and improvise and play, in coordination within a songs musical structure.
The Hotz Box has been used by a variety of bands over the years, both in live performance and in studio.
You can get some more technical details of the software, in this video :
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The Arithmophone
This looks nice to use, and can be set up for alternate tunings. It currently runs on phones and iPads, but they are planning a HW prototype.
It looks like the have three different keypad layouts, two of them look completely new.
https://chielzwinkels.net/arithmophone/