Siemen Terpstra

By JDG

I met Sieman in the late eighties when he visited San Diego with friend Mark Rankin. Sieman is a true scholar of musical theory. His work can be found on his website, siementerpstra.com . He had beautiful penmanship and would create wonderful colorful charts of his scale theories which are mostly based on Just Intonation and 31 and 53 EDO. He is the progenitor of the Lumatone. which is a generalized keyboard layout of hexagonal keys (like a honeycomb). Each key can be programmed to any pitch (frequency) and any color. He wanted to create an instrument that would bring microtonality to the masses and started a “kickstart” to raise money for the project. What happened is what often happens. In the end, Sieman did not receive proper credit. It is because of Sieman that the world now has access to a proper Bosanquet-type keyboard. (see: George Secor, Scalatron and Erv Wilson U648 MicroZone Array Keyboard) . To date the Lumatone is the most successful microtonal keyboard. Too bad Sieman Terpstra has not received proper recognition and remuneration for his idea.