Alternative Ideas for Musical Keyboard(or Piano)Keyset

[theo92]

We all know about musical keyboard or digital piano.

I tried a bit a make a such out of scratch with MIDI interace, with it I can play a thousand of instruments virtuallt through my PC using FL Studio+VSTi.

I have everything set up correctly.
An USB to MIDI interface with PIC18F2550
And a MIDI keyboard MKC from JDP homepage

They both works very very nicely.

But now I'm in trouble with piano keys. The black and white key combination set you know for C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F# and so on.
I cant find this stuff.
I tried using my old plaything toy keyboard but the keys were to small to hold. It didnt have the required 64 keys all.

WILL I use 64 push buttons?
And will mod them somehow to look like a piano keyset?
Or will I use something like opto-electronics, It's hard, I know.

OR any other easy idea? please

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You use 64 keys, usually matrixed and read with a processor.

But considering you can buy cheap MIDI keyboards for hardly anything, it's not a cost effective thing to make one from scratch.