Hello all! My name's Evan, and I'm starting development on an idea I had a few years ago. The Synharmonium is (going to be) a microcontroller-based synthesizer with control elements based on the accordion and the Suzuki Omnichord, and an algorithm to solve the centuries old musical problem of versatile just intonation. Best case, this could have a huge impact on how western music is written and performed. Worst case, its a fun and easy synthesizer you can build at home.
But right now its not much more than an idea and a janky keyboard prototype. I am a student of computer engineering, and I have a non-zero amount of programming skill, but there's still a lot of gaps that I just don't have the experience needed to fill. I need someone who's good at programming, familiar with open-source development, has some spare time, and finds this idea interesting, to help me get the software side of the instrument going. If you can become a major contributor, I'd love to have you, but if you can just hang out in the matrix room and answer questions from time to time that would help a lot.
Gotcha - makes sense. Hadn't heard of MPE yet - thanks, I'll check it out.
Regarding the construction of the algorithm to dictate the tuning through the bass input, this sounds very similar to what arpeggiators do - set the tonic note and the scale type, octaves to travel and melodic direction and you're good to go. While I had a hard time finding a readily available example of an actual algorithm, here's a list of free arpeggiator vst plugins that may have developer pages or files you might be able to use as a starting point. I'm thinking that the bass sets the tonic note, reseting the middle C on the melodic keyboard and arranging the subsequent notes in the scale - just like an arpeggiator does, except rather than playing your notes for you, it's arranging the pitch of your inputs.
But then, I'm not familiar with the stradella bass layout at all, so I may be just talking out my ass. Nonetheless, cool project, and I look forward to seeing it when you've got it complete!