now i'm thinking about some kind of qmk integration that provides step indication and other status info directly on the keyboard. there's LEDs in it anyway right
I’ve thought a lot about this! I’d love to create hardware someday that plugs directly into a keyboard and turns it into a music workstation. I recently came across the Wooting keyboard line which seems like the perfect fit, since you could get pressure sensitive keypresses (currently one big downside of the Typebeat workflow).
pressure sensitive is alright but once you move away from the absolute baseline of common hardware it's more attractive to just spend money on a real synthesizer.
go full pi appliance. it wouldn't be too hard to make an sd image, perhaps compatible with one/some of those "pi tablet" kits, that would boot straight into this, recognize various qmk-compatible usb ids and offer to push firmware.