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KEYBOARDS

Z-Board & G-Board 12 x 23 Array Keyboard

The ZBoard is a 12-"string" by 23 "fret" MIDI keyboard controller which directly combines the features of guitar and piano keyboard. The Zboard is comprised of a 2-dimensional matrix of touch-sensitive keys set in a piano-keyboard housing and played with the two hands in front just like the piano. Each row of keys is ordered in a chromatic sequence just like the fretted notes of a guitar string. The "Strings" are then offset from each other by a perfect fourth interval (This may be easily re-programmed).

Two color-coding schemes are currently available for the keys on the Z-board, and the two schemes reflecting the way the player intends to view the instrument... either as a guitar or as a piano. The first sets up the keyboard to appear as two adjacent guitar necks with appropriate fret markers oriented on the huge bank of keys. The individual necks may be programmed as two groups of six strings in macro fashion so that they may be given individual tunings and other unique parameters. This configuration is referred to as the the "G-Board".

The second configuration for the keyboard color-codes the notes according to the black and white keys of a traditional piano keyboard. Starting with the low C-natural as the lowest white key, each string is tuned chromatically and appears as a nearly-two octave section of a piano keyboard. The strings are again offset in perfect fourth intervals and the resulting pattern of black and white keys gives a skewed "Z"-pattern, hence the name for this configuration. "ZBoard". This setup gives each letter-named key a unique position in the overall pattern which is readily identifiable at a glance. It's easy to see where all of the B-flats are without memorizing fret locations. Chords and scales are easy to realize and re-locate because of the uniform fourths tuning of the instrument combined with the piano-style key-coding scheme. And, it should be stressed that the instrument always plays multiple-notes-per-string which is what you need for playing piano literature and realizing the full polyphonic potential of the ZBoard.

Microzone Generalized Keyboard Specifications:

The Wilson 990 Generalized Keyboard is one of the world's largest Array or Matrix keyboards. With it's huge array of 810 keys, The "990" is designed so that a musician may create any variety of tonal systems, fingering systems, and divisions of the octave within the world of MIDI. This works well with microtonal music where a large array is needed for each octave, or with Western 12-tone music where several independent keyboards can be set up on a single set of hardware. The intent is to allow the user to define any arrangement, or multiple arrangements, of notes and fingerings which seem to be musically applicable to situation at hand.

The "990" can be mapped as a single large keyboard implementing a single, complex tuning map, or several smaller keyboards, each implementing its own tuning or channel map. This way, areas of keys may be defined to hold just certain notes for various compositional effects, eliminating the need to always think �pianistically" for every musical phrase.

The key-action itself has a short travel and is designed to be very quick to the touch with a full dynamic range. Glissandi in either direction are easily performed.

The "990" is completely MIDI compatible. No onboard voice module is currently supplied. Our initial tuning software will be geared toward the Kurzweil K2000, E-Mu Proteus, Ensoniq MR rack, and the SymbolicSound Kyma system.

The Zoning/Layering utility allows the assignment of unique voices as well as other performance parameters to arbitrary blocks of keys. These ZONES may be non-contiguous groups of keys in any shape including "islands", "donuts". Tuning systems and fingerings may be created on the keyboard through the use of "KEYMAPS". A Keymap is a picture of the entire keyboard with a MIDI note/channel assignment for each key. 30 programmable Keymaps are provided. Multiple Keymaps may be active on the keyboard at any time.

Two models currently are offered, the U990 (9 ranks of 90 keys) and the U648, (6 ranks of 48 keys). You can review the "Detailed specifications" pages at this WWW-site at for complete details of the Continuous Controller functions.