[jtheory]

Interesting -- I'd be curious to see what actual musicians would say. It really depends on the type of music you're building with it, I'd say.

I'm not primarily a keyboardist, but I use them; in this case it would surely be tricky to play anything that uses the black keys much; your hands have patterns memorized that (I'd imagine) would be tough to adapt to having the black keys on a separate row.

But because it's MIDI, it really does depend on what you're building, and it might not matter. Recording simple snatches of melody would be fine if you keep away from chromatic lines -- e.g., if you want to add a line that's in C minor, just record it in A minor (all white keys except maybe the G#), then transpose it in a few seconds.

You wouldn't play the Flight of the Bumblebee on it, though.

[idanb]

I can't disagree with you, these haven't gone out into the wild yet - but I will say I've seen some truly gifted piano players / keyboardists take to this without any mention of strange finger/hand issues with the layout.

I'll be honest, I'm not a keyboard player. I designed this to be truly mobile and portable without making compromises on the key size, which my theory is that having a full scale keyboard is more important than the traditional design of the keys. The former makes the device useful, and the later makes it familiar but also prevents it from being very portable without shrinking the keys or otherwise compromising on other dimensions.

I've seen people shred on Keys, it's pretty awesome to see, since I can barely play Yankee Doodle - but I'm getting a lot better!