The Cubical Collection.
Open Sauce lists Keyboard² with Synthphone-E as The Cubical Collection: Musical Instruments Disguised as Office Equipment, made and exhibited by Enoch and Nathan Bradshaw.
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Keyboard
A 100-key, velocity-sensitive MIDI instrument disguised as a full-size beige computer keyboard.
It extends Synthphone-E's office-equipment disguise into a second instrument, replacing QWERTY with an isomorphic musical surface, drum keys, controls, and twelve knobs.
A Model M that never learned to type.
Keyboard² resembles a full-size IBM Model M-style office keyboard, but every part of the surface has been reassigned to performance. The alphanumeric field plays notes, the function area changes settings, and the right side triggers drums.
The familiar object becomes a wide musical controller without pretending the current prototype is finished hardware.
One hundred reasons not to use QWERTY.
The key groups follow the actual firmware ranges. Color identifies function, not decoration.
70 melody keysWicki-Hayden layout
10 control keysSettings and performance
20 drum keysGeneral MIDI percussion
12 knobsMIDI Control Change
Move the shape. Keep the chord.
The melody area is isomorphic: every interval has the same spatial relationship everywhere on the board. Move a scale or chord to another starting note and the fingering geometry stays the same.
Threshold A Threshold B Elapsed time → MIDI velocity
Not just on or off.
Each key uses an analog magnetic sensor. The firmware measures how quickly the key moves between two actuation thresholds and converts that elapsed time into MIDI velocity. Faster travel produces a harder note.
A thousand scans every second.
A Daisy Seed reads 100 sensors through analog multiplexers, filters their values, tracks each key state, calculates velocity, scans the knobs, and queues MIDI messages.
13analog multiplexers
1 kHzsensor scan task
100key state machines
12continuous controls
MIDInotes, drums, bend, CC
Built to control the phone.
Keyboard² can send melody notes, chords, drum notes, pitch bend, and controller values to MIDI devices such as Synthphone-E. The two instruments share the office disguise and enough of the MIDI language to perform together.
Known mismatch: Keyboard² sends Program Change messages that Synthphone-E currently ignores. The relationship is real; perfect interoperability is not.
The bodge wires are part of the record.
The current PCB needs one solder bridge to enable the final sensor multiplexers and one wire to route a potentiometer signal to a valid ADC pin. Keyboard² is an active prototype, not a production keyboard. MIDI input is not presented as complete.
July 17–19, 2026
San Mateo County Event Center
Official exhibit listing ↗