Ancient language instrument

I get the best email, like this from Dog-Matic: "I'd like to make a keyboard that has Sanskrit and Hebrew letters engraved on the keys, that, when played, displays the letters played in English on a video monitor. The idea is that when in 'the zone', improvisors may be speaking an ancient language, similar to a Ouji board process. Anyone interested, or know if this has been tried somewhere?" Well?

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Wouldn't this just show the notes being played? If I played aleph, bet, bet, aleph, am I really channelling ancient Hebrew just to say ABBA?

Visually displaying Hebrew or Sanskrit whilst playing, now that could look cool. You could have a small process keeping track of the letters and constantly doing a dictionary lookup: when a sequence actually equates to a work, it could display it fully with an english translation beside it.

# posted by

Unknown : 12:02 am

That should be, of course, "equates to a word".

# posted by

Unknown : 12:03 am

If you have enough monkeys doing this for long enough they'll eventually type out the old Testament.

True.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:59 am

WOW dude because ancient cultures are so mysterious and exotic OMG their letters look psychedelic. I bet I can channel some Jungian archetype within me that remembers what my ancestors may or may not have spoken - while playing a melody on a hoover patch.

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:55 am

The infinite monkey theorem is NOT true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Monkey_Theorem

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:04 pm

Well, he's probably already got the little person and the tiny foam Stonehenge lined up.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:06 pm

Check out the midibox project. TK does cool stuff with midi controllers. It would need a computer based translator to interpet midi messages. You may be able to make the words come out on screen by programing the pic and make a midicontroller that controls a sample of the smallest unit of sound (syllable or smaller depending on the language). Have it record you messages like a sequence and have a translator program. Rests would be spaces. Then just learn the damn language. Midibox would be used to display the messages on screen. Or just write a prog on the computer (which would be easier though less performance based, imagine letters and phrases displayed over an oscilloscope or something) You could even set it up with velocity or something for accents. Of course translation would be still subjective to want you want to find. Look there's another 23...

"C4 D4 F6 F5 F6 G7" may be "Damnant quod non intellegunt"??

It would basically look like some occult seasame street. "Da. . . Quod. . .DAQUOD".

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:49 am