Bucktooth Piano

Concept

The concept developed back in ~1999 or 2000, out of using a QWERTY-keyboard to input musical tones, since it was what I had handy. At the time, I was playing around with a lot of scales that had less than twenty-one tones per octave.

Note naming

So, first, I had not found any notation conventions for any equal divided octave-type tunings, so I made up my own. I know these notations probably exist outside of my experience, but here's what I started using back then.

I figured that I needed to take whichever tones were closest to conventional intervals and place them on the A and C scales with appropriate note names, then kind of compromise between those two.

19-EDO:

The easiest was 19-EDO, since it's a mean-tone tuning.

Chromatic scale: 1 bb2 b2 2 bb3 b3 3 b4 4 #4 b5 5 #5 b6 6 bb7 b7 7 #7

A chromatic scale: A Bbb Bb B Cb C C# Db D D# Eb E E# F F# Gb G G# Gx

C chromatic scale: C Dbb Db D Ebb Eb E Fb F F# Gb G G# Ab A Bbb Bb B B#

Composite scale: C C# Dd D D# Eb E E#/Fb F F# Gb G G# Ab A A# Bb B B#/Cb

Keyboard:

17-EDO:

This was a little trickier, since the order of notes gave me a little trouble off the bat.

Chromatic Scale: 1 bb2 d2 2 #2 t3 b4 4 #4 b5 5 #5 d6 bb7 #6 d7 #7

A chromatic scale: A Bbb Bd B B# Ct Db D D# Eb E E# Ft Gb Fx Gt Gx

C chromatic scale: C Dbb Db D D# Ed Fb F F# Gb G G# Ad Bbb A# Bd B#

Composite scale: C Db C# D Eb D# E F Gb F# G Ab G# A Bb A# B C

Keyboard:

But note that the order of the notes in the chromatic scale is different going from 19-EDO to 17-EDO, because a lot of diatonic naming compromise is made in 17-EDO and less so in 19-EDO. So, in 19-EDO, Db is sharper than C#, but in 17-EDO, it is not.

22-EDO:

Okay, 22-EDO is great and has a lot of diatonic possibilities, but for me, it's a system that pushes one or two envelopes. First is the additions of some quarter tone-like intervals, but not all of them, and second is the addition of some intervals that I don't even know what to call, it feels cheap to try to call them augmented fourth and diminished fifth, because I don't really think that's what they represent best, but I'm going to go with that for now. There is also the fact that modalities don't work equally anymore. For example, the steps through the major scale are +4 +3 +2 +4 +3 +4 +2, and though the aeolian mode is starting from the second to last step (+4 +2 +4 +3 +2 +4 +3), the actual natural minor scale steps through as +4 +2 +3 +4 +2 +4 +3, making the minor scale distinct from the aeolian mode of the major scale. Phew.

Heavy stuff in that last paragraph, but my point is that you have to make little corrections as you play through scales.

Chromatic Scale: 1 bb2 b2 d2 2 #2 b3 3 b4 4 ?#4? tritone ?b5? 5 #5 b6 6 bb7 #6 d7 7 #7

A chromatic scale: A Bbb Bb Bd B B# C C# Db D D# D#/Eb Eb E E# F F# Gb Fx Gt G# Gx

C chromatic scale: C Dbb Db Dd D D# Eb E Fb F F# F#/Gb Gb G G# Ab A Bbb A# Bd B B#

Composite Scale: C C# Db D D# Eb* Eb E E#/Fb F F# Gb G G#* G# Ab A A# Bb* Bb B B#/Cb C

Keyboard:

I introduced three split keys per octave, otherwise, it works in much the same way as the 19-EDO bucktooth board. An alternative is to use the 19-tone keyboard with a pitch modifier pedal to distinguish Eb, G#, and Bb into different tones.

It's kind of a mess, since the C-major scale is not all white keys. But, there is simply not an ideal way to fit the scales we know from standard tuning into this system flawlessly, unlike mean-tone based tunings, like 19-EDO.