of Microprocessors

newsletter, writing numerous articles in other publications, and delivering quite a
few lectures and demonstrations to amateur computer clubs.
More recently I hope that some of my more innovative product design efforts at
Kurzweil like the MidiBoard, and ExpressionMate and contributions to others
have been a source of inspiration, or at least satisfaction to many. And I hope to
expand that role in the future when my time is up here in Korea.
Of course there are some regrets and "might have beens" too.
What if I had opted to go full time with IBM instead of partnering with Dave Cox
to form Technology Unlimited in 1971?
Or accepted that interview with Wayne Green for editor of a "new computer
magazine" which turned out to be Byte?
I guess that's what makes life so interesting.
SONIK : How did you become involved with the original Kurzweil Music
Systems?
HAL : Actually that is a pretty interesting story. As you know, I had written
"Musical Applications of Microprocessors" which really covered just about
everything in the world of synthesis at that time. Included was a description of
and plans for a velocity sensitive computer interfaceable music keyboard.
Meanwhile, a small group in Boston, called Key Concepts, had developed a
keyboard instrument similar to a clavichord but with a mechanism in each key
that would tighten or loosen its string as the key was slid forward or backward. It
was an amplified acoustic instrument that worked pretty well but they knew that if
the idea was to have any commercial future, it had to involve an electronic
keyboard and be connected to a synthesizer.
Sometime in 1983, I believe, one of the team members happened to get a copy of
my book and upon reading the chapter about keyboards was moved to contact me
through the publisher. I was offered a free trip to Boston (I was then working at
MTU, in North Carolina) to see if I might be interested in working on a "radically
new kind of keyboard". I took the bait and was very intrigued with the concept
and excited as well at the prospect of really getting away from computers per se'
for awhile and into instrument design.
Anyway, in a little over a year of after-hours work, a 61-key prototype with
sliding, polyphonic pressure sensitive keys was working quite well. It was
attached to a Rhodes Chroma via its Apple-II interface. A slight software mod
allowed the Chroma to respond to the poly-pitchbend, poly-pressure signals
produced. Known as the "Notebender Keyboard", it was shown publicly a couple
of times and loaned to the Berklee School of Music for a while. Lyle Mays was