You my fiend are an absolutely awesome person! Thank you so much. I think I could just use your pcb to experiment with, I have a good way to think about it, say I use your 3x8 layout, I would like to make a 3 string bass guitar essentially if that makes sense, lay it out chromatically on the 8 rows, and on the columns separate them by fifths, ie E A D. I've been studying jazz and have a pretty good grip of diatonic scales, I would just like to map them differently in different modes for instance, one mode could be pentatonics, next diatonic, then chromatically like the aforementioned guitar like controller.
I think I could use your PCB, would save me some hassle and yours is massively cheap and easier compared to making my own, just afraid of the smt stuff.
I could test bed the idea pretty simply and get some instantaneous feedback. I could do both 4x4 and 3x8, I want to give them to some friends that make great production, but have bad music theory skills, so I want to embed my knowledge in a device I can help them to learn music through. Have you seen the launchpad or ableton Push? I would like to make a smaller version (5x5 is minimum to mimic the guitars layout) that I can put various scales and chords into, spits out midi notes, so can be used live with analog synths that accept midi.
Sorry for the rant, I'm very enthusiastic about this project! I have a video of the Max/msp patch that I've prototyped with the scales and chord memoriser, it uses the Native Instruments maschine (basically a 4x4 pad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdNX5Qz4g5I
I dream to put it inside a microprocessor basically! But would really to mimic the guitar with the 5x5 thing ideally.