The Beginning

I'm learning to play a new instrument and I wanted to document the process, both for myself and any others that might be interested.

Why might others be interested in what is typically a mundane, grueling process best kept to oneself for the sake of others' sanity?

Simple. The instrument I'm teaching myself to play is called a jammer and is quite novel. Probably fewer than one hundred folks out there in the world have played one, and it doesn't seem as though more than five or six people have made an effort to discuss it much on the Internet. Even the musical layout that the jammer is based out, the Wicki-Hayden system, remains relatively obscure, used primarily in concertinas and home-built hobby instruments (like the one I'm learning on).

In any case, isomorphic keyboards (any keyboard that preserves fingering patterns anywhere on the keyboard, like the Wicki-Hayden) should be of interest to anyone who, like me, finds the traditional piano-style keyboard to be frustrating and limiting creatively. In that capacity, I hope this blog can be inspirational.

The concept of the jammer can be summed up as such: you have two Wicki-Hayden (W-H) keyboards, one for each hand. The right hand plays a traditional W-H while the left plays a mirrored layout, which preserves all fingerings and patterns when you switch hands. In this manner, one needs only learn a single pattern rather than the twenty four (one for each of twelve keys times two for each hand) that a piano layout requires.

I have two Axis 49 keyboards on their way to my house right now, and I plan on remapping these neat little controllers to W-H. Until they arrive, all I can really do is parrot back the theory that's already well-covered elsewhere on the Internet, and is well summarized on the relevant Wikipedia articles thanks to the jammer's resident Internet evangelist, Ken Rushton. If anything I've talked about so far is remotely interesting, check those Wikipedia articles out and come back in a couple days when my Axis 49 keyboards come in.

(PS: C-Thru Music is currently running a sale on Axis 49s, selling them for half their normal price ($250 instead of $495). This is a fantastic deal in my opinion; all other commercial isomorphic keyboards are well over $1500, and even a DIY solution offered by analoguehaven will probably run you around $500 all told. Until someone like Korg jumps on the isomorphic hardware bandwagon (unlikely any time soon), this is absolutely the lowest barrier to entry anyone is likely to see in the near future. On the other hand, if you own a tablet computer, there are a number of isomorphic keyboard apps that are quite capable. I like Musix, personally. Unfortunately, these software solutions, while nice for trying the isomorphic concept and auditioning different layouts, lack the tactile feedback of a hardware controller, which is entirely necessary for the level of performance I hope to attain on my instrument of choice.)