It's been available in Japan since May, but the 61-key Yamano Hand Roll Piano is now available from Audio Cubes. It weighs a kilo, rolls up into a thing the size of a beer can, contains 128 internal sounds, an internal speaker and a MIDI-out socket. Unfortunately, it's $279, but think of the innovative desk design solutions you could come up with if you combined it with a roll up qwerty keyboard.
Posted by Tom Whitwell.
Comments:
This is NOT a MIDI keyboard! Huh? Did you think to check? Audiocubes couldn't find any information about it having MIDI in any for for me. It also doesn't seem to support velocity or aftertouch. Let me know if it is controlling all your MIDI modules, but I think it's not. eh@mad.scientist.com
Well, if you look at this page: https://www.yamano-music.com/docs/hard/handroll_piano.html It certainly looks like it's got a MIDI out. Hey, if you bought one of these to control a rack of gear, I'm really sorry!
Sorry to have flamed. The new version has MIDI out. The new ones aren't out of Japan, yet. The control box looks quite different, compare your page to the Yamano web site.
I'm pretty interested in getting one of the 5-octave with MIDI versions.
This is a USA source, but they don't seem to have the new model yet. http://www.hecsaninc.com/home.html
Played one in Japan a couple times and I really wished it was better than it turned out to be. Found it very hard to play if you wanted to play chords rather than the spare note. I didn't hear any velocity/touch sensitivity and you need a fair amount of pressure to sound the note. I guess if you practiced a lot or were used to toy instruments you could get stuff out of it but I felt the whole feel was really badly compromised just to allow you to roll it up. Maybe in a few generations they will have something nicer.
It's been available in Japan since May, but the 61-key Yamano Hand Roll Piano is now available from Audio Cubes. It weighs a kilo, rolls up into a thing the size of a beer can, contains 128 internal sounds, an internal speaker and a MIDI-out socket. Unfortunately, it's $279, but think of the innovative desk design solutions you could come up with if you combined it with a roll up qwerty keyboard.
Posted by Tom Whitwell. 
: 12:00 am