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Piano Keys

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Re: Piano Keys

#71

Post by ajuc »

Snarwin wrote: post #33
ajuc wrote: post #4

I never understood why the piano keyboard isn't regular. It forces players to remember different positions for the same chord transposed to start at different notes. Like why do I have to remember the shape for C major and D major chords? It should be the same shape just starting at C vs D. It's not even that hard to fix. There's 12 semitones in an octave. Just make it 6 white 6 black keys.

It's not actually that much to remember. There are 3 shapes that cover most of the major chords, and 3 special cases (F♯, B♭, and B).

And then you add 4th note and you break the accidental 3-note symmetries :)

Re: Piano Keys

#72

Post by Nition »

Nition wrote: post #30
madaxe_again wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, you fumble for a minute and then you adapt. I had a Young Chang that followed this model, and a Yamaha at school that didn’t.

Interesting, my piano is a Yamaha (specifically a 1980 Yamaha YUA, basically a U3), and it does follow the model (same width everywhere). Photo: https://i.imgur.com/ulsLUoG.jpeg I also have a MIDI keyboard (M-Audio Hammer 88) which follows the same model. I'd like to see a photo of someone's piano that uses a different system, really I thought they were always this way. It's a good system because it lets the black ke…

There is a good [dead] comment reply to my comment here by user sefn where they point out that in fact the spacing is not exactly equal, it varies by about 1mm (and they're correct).

If you've got "showdead" on, you can see it, click the timestamp on it, and click "vouch" if you want to vouch for it to come back. Seems inappropriately killed to me.

They have a second good [dead] comment in this discussion which I've also vouched to return.

Re: Piano Keys

#74

Post by monomers »

prmph wrote: post #38

I guess I must be dumb or something, but I'm simply not seeing the problem. Imagine the piano had only white keys, no problem right? Now just place the black keys at the back, between some of the white keys, right in the middle, such that each black key takes like a quarter of the width of the sandwiching white keys. Now what's the problem with this again? Can someone explain in clearer terms? If the issue is that we…

That design you describe is what is pictured at the top of the article.

Problem is that then the keys are not equally spaced chromatically (e.g. larger spacing between B and C than between C and C#).

You could probably get used to play like that, but it would be ineficient in terms of space for both the fingers and the mechanics of the piano (hammers, strings).

So what you do, in reality, is move some of the black keys down a bit (C#, F#) and some up (Eb, Bb) so that the spacing between the center of the keys is regular.

I don't think that's what's described in the article though?

Re: Piano Keys

#75

Post by Nition »

sefn wrote: post #44
Nition wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, my piano is a Yamaha (specifically a 1980 Yamaha YUA, basically a U3), and it does follow the model (same width everywhere). Photo: https://i.imgur.com/ulsLUoG.jpeg I also have a MIDI keyboard (M-Audio Hammer 88) which follows the same model. I'd like to see a photo of someone's piano that uses a different system, really I thought they were always this way. It's a good system because it lets the black ke…

As the article says, it is impossible to make the back ends of the white keys equal in width so piano makers have to compromise. The difference is about a millimetre so many pianists may never have noticed. The naive approach of placing each black key at the midpoint of its adjacent white keys makes B, C, E and F quite wide at the base, but it is harder to fit a finger between the black keys to play D, G or A, which…

Good point about the ~1mm difference. Interestingly on my MIDI keyboard the difference between white key widths is even larger (maybe ~3mm max), showing some variation in style.

By the way your two comments in this discussion had been voted down and hidden (marked [dead]) for some reason. I voted for them to return and I'm happy to see they've now been reinstated.

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