So far, I think the only musical instrument you can buy from the gem store is a flute, which has a 2 octave range. However, the players who use this instrument are limited to playing in a specific major scale (E Major). It would be nice if there can be an instrument that allows all chromatic pitches within 2 octaves to be played. I understand that, due to the interface of the hotkeys, that might not be possible without reorganizing the hotkeys so every chromatic pitch has its own input on a keyboard that corresponds to an actual instrument, the easiest of which would be a piano.
I can imagine one particular setup for a C chromatic scale to mimic how it looks on a piano…
`—2—-3———-5—-6—-7——-
Q—-W—-E—R—-T—-Y—-U—I
(The bottom row consisting of letters would sound similar to the current setup with the flute, but the addition of the numbers on the top row would add the complete chromatic scale needed to hit any pitch within an octave)
Clearly, this becomes problematic because with this setup, the keys that comprise of the bottom row has to disable whatever hotkeys are given to those commands. For example, W would be considered “moving forward”, but what would happen in this setup? Would you still move forward or would you play the pitch “Re”?
I understand the complexity of having to deal with this issue, and I would hardly be surprised if this problem is the reason why the flute doesn’t have a chromatic scale.
But what if every note on a chromatic scale does NOT need to have its own input on the keyboard? What if you can use ONE single input to change the pitch of any note? What if the 0 key becomes the input to sharpen or flatten a pitch, thus changing it entirely? Okay, you might argue the 0 key is already taken. What if you add more shift inputs? I can imagine an extremely simple setup:
Just have a musical instrument with the setup that the flute currently has on the keyboard (keys 1-0), but use any other input, such as Shift+number_key to sharpen and/or flatten the notes you are playing.
ArenaNet, why hasn’t this been implemented? This would allow for creativity beyond imagination within the community. I, for one, would immediately buy any musical instrument that has the implementation of altering pitches by sharpening or flattening them using one or two simple keyboard inputs.
And if this can be possible with multiple instruments, such as the piano, violin, and guitar, then I can see the musically competent players in the community creating wonderful pieces of work which can only serve to expand the creativity that Guild Wars 2 has to offer.
