Why doesn the Tonal Plexus have velocity sensing keys?
Velocity sensing keys would be nice, but on an instrument like the Tonal Plexus, they become impractical in terms of design constraints and cost. Although velocity sensing can be achieved in may ways, the most common way is to use lever action keys with two switches per key. On a 12-tone keyboard, this is not such a big deal, but right away you can see that an instrument that has 211 keys per octave immediately becomes an instrument with 422 switches per octave. That means a four octave keyboard now has 1688 switches, and an eight octave has 3376 switches. And supplying a lever key action for the Tonal Plexus layout is rather involved (see the 2003 prototype which uses an early abandoned layout). It was determined that lever action keys were not suitable for the final layout. The small size of the keys prohibits normal dual switch designs (two switches at different heights, or different locations on a lever). Single actuator dual action pushbuttons normally require compression springs,
