A: Actually, I’ve been messing around with alternative keyboard design ever since I was a teenager. But the idea for the Thumbdrop came many, many years later. It was a sudden flash, your classic eureka moment. But it only came after all those years of exploration. Sometimes, that’s how it works.

Anyway, I was working on a bunch of other keyboard ideas at the time, one for multi-level keyboards and the other for a reduced-width keyboard and it was like two ideas got together in my subconscious and had a baby.

First prototype & popsicle-stick-proof-of-concept

A: The multi-level keyboard idea is now what I now call a thumbdrop keyboard. Not only is it one of our trademarked brand names but I also think of it as a broad category descriptor for a class of musical keyboards. Sometimes organists on their multi-decker manuals will drop a thumb down to a lower manual while the fingers of the same hand remain on the higher level. But it’s awkward because the manuals aren’t usually that close together. The Pleyel Double-Manual Piano is another interesting case, an adventurous but isolated effort to set up a piano like a double-manual harpsichord. I was exploring ideas for piano in a similar vein only closer proximity so it’s easier for one hand to play on both levels at once.

David Steinbuhler with his DS Standard reduced-width piano action set.

A: When I was still a teenager my first road band keyboard was a Fender Rhodes. This is way back in the time before synths and digital keyboards were widely available. Some of us go back that far. Anyway, the action on the Rhodes was pretty stiff and I didn’t like the feeling of my fingers getting jammed in between black keys. The traditional design for black keys gives them this slight pyramid shape where they widen out slightly towards the bottom. Unless you have skinny fingers it can be a problem because that shape actually squeezes the strikeable area in between the blacks by almost an 1/8 of an inch which is significant. The stiff Rhodes action really amplified the effect.

So I was young and questioning everything like why does the universe exist at all and why do I need to put up with these annoying black keys on my Rhodes just because I wasn’t born with spider fingers. One day I dismantled the Rhodes and took all the black keys to a local auto-body shop and asked for a go with the bench grinder. I was careful to leave the tops alone but I ground down all the sides of the keys until they slanted slightly in instead of out. I was typical stupid teenager, too. I never used a filter mask and when I was done grinding my whole face was covered in black dust. Luckily, I survived to tell the tale.

A:  It was great, like a revelation. Suddenly I could drive a truck between the black keys. My fingers felt so free and liberated. I could strike the skinny white keys tails at just about any point without having to fight the finger friction against the sides of black keys. And that affects tone control in a big way. It means your white key touch is way more even and controlled.

A:  Right. The altered black keys were such a great experience it got me wondering what other ways I could improve the keyboard. Over the years I gathered up four more ergonomic ‘tweaks’. Each one is small on its own and accomplishes something different. But with 5 improvements the combined effect is powerful. The basic keyboard layout remains unchanged, from about 10 feet you wouldn’t know the difference. But once you put your hands on it there’s a feeling of greater freedom for the fingers, so much more room to move, wider margins of error, greater accuracy. It lets you play with greater abandon and tone control and practice with greater efficiency. It even has the de facto effect of making your fingers slightly longer. As far as a conventional piano keyboard design goes, I’m convinced the Mark 5 is the most forgiving and easy to play musical keyboard ever. Plus, the learning curve is close to zero.

A: We need to gain some momentum first but we hope to introduce the Mark 5 as maybe a 3rd or 4th wave product. For now, we’ve making a kind of veiled intro in the form of an album of piano music offered as an entry level reward in the Thumbdrop keyboard crowdsourcing campaign. The album represents the first ever commercial piano recording using the Mark 5 keyboard but no one will actually get to see the keyboard until later. It’s a big tease, really.

A:  Moonlight Through Branches. The music itself is pretty unambitious, really. The album is mostly just laid back solo piano, my own performance and compositions, mostly mood pieces and themes. No jazz. There’s a little light classical, some Celtic influences and some contemporary finger style folk guitar influences but nothing remotely groundbreaking.

A: Yeah, Yeah, like I say, the Thumbdrop Keyboard is much more copacetic with American roots styles. Those big reaches in the left hand work great for jazz, blues, gospel or anything related. Female jazz pianists, especially, will see a kind of liberation. For the first time they’ll be able to play those big Art Tatum chords if they want. And with the 10th Ave. Blues Expansion video we even have a left hand boogie pattern that uses 10ths, 11ths and 12ths. It’s like a brand new way to play rock ‘n roll and boogie piano. I hope that gets some attention. Classical piano is more dominated by the octave in the left hand. Still, we can identify solid 10ths in classical piano in works by Liszt and Rachmaninoff and others. It think it would be nice for classical players to have the choice. So I hope they take an interest, too.

Q: But there are some top classical players who also play a jazz.

A:  Not that many, really. What you do often get is a lot of respect for jazz from classical players because they understand what it takes. They know that even with years of classical training you can’t just pick up and play jazz at a high level.

Q: What about avant garde or contemporary composers?

A: I think we may have a chance for some traction there. Cutting-edge composers are all about the ‘new’. Originality, is their stock and trade. Now they can compose in a brand new space up to solid 12ths plus knowing anyone can perform their pieces. These are the types that might spearhead the installation of the Thumbdrop Keyboard onto institutional pianos.

Q: You see a role for the major music publishers in all this?

A:  We think there’s a pretty good argument for a natural win/win synergy with the music publishers. If CutlerKeys succeed, they get to repackage and resell huge chunks of their piano catalogue arranged for 10ths. Right now, stock arrangements default to the octave because that’s what everyone can reach. But if we succeed, solid 10ths become universal and all that changes. Think of all the piano styles that can be enhanced with solid 10ths, not just jazz and blues but gospel, soul, jazz rock, R&B, even some pop. It’s a huge swath. Hopefully, the publishers take an interest and help getting the word out because it could mean a big windfall for them if the Thumbdrop hits. It’s such a natural alliance I don’t think we even need a contract.

Q: What about the black keys? You’re leaving them out in the opening round.

A:  This was really the most difficult decision of our campaign. Obviously, it would be much better to lead off with the complete set of black and white keys. The main problem is you can’t hook up the black keys the same way as the whites; there’s no direct access from the front. We already have a solution but it’s a little more complicated. As a small start-up and we saw this chance to come out with an unprecedented keyboard innovation at a super affordable price that was not going to be to overwhelming to manufacture or use. There’s no electronics in the opening phase and that’s where a lot of crowdsourcing campaigns get bogged down, with their electronic supply chains.

Button and piston style black key upgrade will be next.

A:  Versions for digital are already in the works. In terms of the way the Thumbdrop Keyboard installs and operates it’s so much easier to start with acoustic pianos. But we have a long range motto: Solid 10ths. Any hand size. Any piano. If the piano world gets behind us we think we can get there.