The other day in math class, my friend and I were talking about how awesome it would be to kill time spent in math class with a calculator synthesizer. This is just a proof of concept for the guitar layout, using the function keys to "strum", and the other keys as frets. As you can see, I'm no good at playing this thing. I might end up just doing a chromatic keyboard, as it's quite awkward holding the calculator with this layout. There are also a few silly bugs with the keyboard involving the x^2, comma, (, ), and / keys.

As of right now, this just uses my existing software to transmit key presses to the PC, which does the actual synthesis. However, I've been looking in to existing systems, namely TruSound, for getting totally on-calc synthesis. I'm just worried about spending time on assembly for a pile of poop, so that's why I made this quick proof of concept tonight. Also, the computer sided synthesis code will provide a good framework to build from.

Hmm, pretty cool idea. I remember when you were discussing this on Cemetech's IRC channel, so I'm glad that you brought it to fruition. I think you'll find that the polyphonic sound output is harder (but certainly far from impossible, as mobileTunes demonstrates) on-calc versus on-comp. I'll be following this with interest.