As I sit in my studio the three pieces of kit which are essential are; my piano keyboard, my quertty keyboard, and my mouse. trouble is I only have three hands, and as I lay back in my exec chair (during the many hours i spend in my studio) normally one bit of kit is out of reach and this seriously interrupts workflow.
For those of us who enter notation it would be great to have a proper controller.
The idea I have in mind is something like the Prodikeys
http://www.prodikeys.com/products/prodikeys_DM/
but a more built with the professional in mind.
T his Prodikeys computer/music keyboard is very old tech now and no 64 bit driver is planned, it was aimed at the Karaoke market rather than the serious user but its the only thing I can find that can do the following:
1] Function as a qwerty keyboard but with a 1.5 octave musical keyboard also. The querty keyboard could maybe be on the right and be laid out like a mobile phone keyboard - everyone is familiar with this layout now. there could also be a mouse pad so you would not need to keep a mouse on your hand too.
2] The main purpose of the keyboard would be something you could have on your lap and input notes with. Apart from a 1.5 octave keybaord (with octave shift) there could be dedicated buttons with common note values and a key for dotted values. There would be a keys for switching between key editor, score widows etc, and of course mod and pitch wheels. There would be some assignable pots too and some transport keys.
Using this type of keyboard you would simply play in your notes, usually step time wide I suppose, changing the duration at will. You could interact with Cubase, esp the score window and key editors, very easily, yet still have the functionality of a querty keyboard (maybe where the number pad is).
I realise that some of this can be done with a conventional qwerty keyboard using shortcuts, but that’s not the same thing as seeing all the whole notes, quarter notes and eights before your eyes as dedicated buttons and having (even a) basic piano keyboard at your fingertips. Qwerty keyboards don’t have mod wheels either.
Seems to me the engineer types have got a huge choice of controller interfaces but the ‘musica notation’ types have got nothing for notes
This could really ease the use of Cubase for composers and attract a lot of users (along with the magnificent expression tools we now have)
Seems to be a long time coming IMO
Come on developers! All you need to do is commission a piece of work in China.
