That’s exactly right. One has to keep overheads super-low while the product climbs up out of the Long Tail into the mainstream. However, that climb can happen a lot faster than it used to, so long as the product is truly “remarkable,” offering extraordinary value at a low price.

As some commenters have noted, the key “price” in music-making is TIME. Learning time and practice time dominate the equation. If the Thummer (and ThumMusic System) prove to deliver an equivalent amount of musical knowledge & skill in (say) a third the time or less, while providing greater expressive potential and opening new musical frontiers, then it’s got a very good chance of going viral. Its unique ability to support Dynamic Tonality and other truly novel yet traditional-sounding effects is important in this, given the music induatry’s insatiable desire for music that is novel…but not TOO novel.

Also, Thumtronics’ innovations lend themselves to a line of products designed for very young children. If we capture the headwaters, then the stream’s momentum works in our favor (albeit on a generational time scale).

As to Thumtronics’ hyperbole — it ain’t hype if it’s true. Big changes can happen fast if the conditions are right. The success of Guitar Hero suggests that the non-musical public is eager to experience music-making, if the time-cost can be reduced sufficiently.

Watch this space.

Secondly, I don’t think Ken or anyone else would mind if some big manufacturer came along and made a mass-produced thummer - in fact, that’s what Jim Plamondon’s been trying to do with no success. Kenis just doing this in the absence of a mass-produced device.

Yes, I’m making conversion keys to convert a Standard Design (SD) keyboard into a 3-row general-purpose (GP) mutable design, relatively cheaply. By folding the GP kbd over or using 2 keyboards, one can get 6 rows.
By reprogramming the note assignments and chosing your own shapes for the key-caps, a GP Keyboard starts to get interesting.

E.g., in DIYKeyBoard.org we are wondering just how close we can get to the gains promised by Fixx’s Law (see wikipedia) of a factor of 3-4 faster playing speed with a jammer or c-thru layout. There are also neat things hinted at in moving the pitch-bend and mod controls to make them actually useful.

The catch? The conversion kits are likely to be expensive at first: “Cheap” = $200, plus you must supply your own keyboard(s) to convert. Music = money.

Ken, MusicScienceGuy.

This guy is making kits to make a controller very much like the Thummer, and they will actually be available this summer.

http://musicscienceguy.vox.com/library/posts/