Ireland-based Joyst Instruments has launched a Kickstarter project to fund production of the Joyst, a unique MIDI controller, based around gamer-style joysticks, that they say is designed to make music creation tactile and expressive.
“The Joyst is a total rethink of what a MIDI controller can be,” they say. “Every note gets its own analogue joystick for expressive control of pitch-bending and after-touching.”
The Joyst also lays out notes in a hexagonal pattern, which means that every chord type is the same shape, and every scale type uses the same fingering when you transpose it, which they describe as ‘the joy of hex’.
The Joyst also supports the new MPE standard, so every note can be articulated individually. You can use a USB cable to plug it into your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), hardware synth or have individual control over each note.
Pricing and Availability
Production of the Joyst is being funded via a Kickstarter project and it is available to project backers starting at €199.
The design is clever and the feature set is impressive. These kinds of designs should be welcomed and even embraced as it is only a matter of time before someone hits the sweet spot. As it is, this is a cool idea for special effects and sound-design. It’s hard for me to imagine it feeling nice for general playing. Seems like playing with hard velocities would involve the joystick tilting off to one side at higher velocities. Also the keycaps seem not that fun to play with thumbs.
Looks really interesting and exciting, I’d love a more compact version though, those edges don’t seem really necessary
My only worry is the tech, thats a lot of mechanical joyhats, these, when on gamepads are prone to drift longterm.
The more I look at this the more I think something touch capacitive would have made more sense.
As much as I support the idea of this, I’m most concerned about the lack of good musical results in any of the videos.
Oh, and it’s missing DIN MIDI.
I prefer the “standard” keyboard layout I’ve known for years, because I eventually learned how to play the synth rather than just the keys. All the same, this is a smart design. It may have mechanical issues over time like anything else, but it hits several bases well. It seems like a poor man’s Osmose in a way, but its not a mere novelty. I wonder if it’ll make it into rigs like Orbital’s…. it’d be a good fit.
This looks like it has potential, but their advertising for it is terrible. They threw a backing track over the video, and you don’t get a chance to hear what it can actually do. It’s supposed to be an MPE instrument? Then show off it’s MPE capabilities.
I like the idea of using a buncha thumb sticks like this though, that’s clever.
Super cool idea! I wonder though how this can work, as MIDI seems to restricted for your purposes (compared, e.g., to Open Sound Control): Pitch bend, after touch, modulation, volume, etc. are always applied to all notes from that MIDI channel -> so when playing one chord with each note having its individual frequency modulation (vibrato effect), you will certainly have to route each note to one individual MIDI channel, right? Does that work at all?