Lumatone 01 Layouts

Last week, I received my Lumatone keyboard. I have a basic setup, and it turns out there is a lot to learn. There will be more posts to come about the keyboard, but I wanted to start with the idea of layouts.

The Lumotone has software called the Lumatone editor, which for each key, sets several things:

• The kind of key it is (key, continuous controller, etc)
• What MIDI channel it sends
• What MIDI note it sends
• What color the key should be.

It comes with 10 presets, and I want to talk about that briefly.

The “standard” piano

Nearly all keyboard instruments these days use the Halberstadt layout, named after the first instrument that used it. This layout is so ubiquitous, that many people are unaware that historically, there were other options.

The conventional layout with the “white keys” covering the diatonic major scale starting with C. The other notes are played with smaller, “black keys” that are positioned between these white keys and shifted away from the player.

The main disadvantage of this scale is that it somewhat obscures the equal-division nature of the most common tuning use these days: 12 Equal Divisions of the Octave (12-EDO). Although the tuning allows for easy transposition, a piano player has to learn numerous different fingerings (usually 3-7, but as many as 12, depending on how many notes are in the chord or scale). Even skilled piano players will have scales and chords they are weaker on, just because less music is written in these keys.

Other

A common alternative layout is the known as the Bosanquet keyboard (link). This is effectively the Halberstadt layout, but shifted around to make playing symmetrical.

• Must know scale, but scale being played, not what key it is in.

• Still linear, so works with instruments.

• Shifting

• Microtones

• Rows, etc

• Lumatone setup

• Harmonic Table

• Harmonic nearer

• Scales are quite different and a little challenging to learn