Pragmatics of a polyphonic calculator (chapter 2)

[Joseph_21sv]

(03-07-2016 09:35 PM)BarryMead Wrote:  I can think of one other requirement that seems important for a polyphonic device.

The KEYBOARD LOGIC should allow for multiple simultaneous keys to be pressed at once if you intend to support chords. Typical row/column decoders do not allow for this so you may have to have one CPU I/O pin for each key if you want no limitations on key press combinations.

Hope this helps, Barry

That would be interesting to try. However, pragmatically, since the concept of this calculator is that it is to be handheld (e. g. a triphonic HP 38G) and handheld scientific and business-financial calculators, especially programmable ones, normally have fairly small keys so as to make room to dedicate keys to commonly-needed functions, it would then be too hard for people with low fine-motor skills to simply play a single line of melody on it. Moreover, since it is to be programmable, it is not even going to make sense to try to fix its synthesizer to any exact scale, although we could at least concede a pre-programmed frequency lookup table.