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AFAIK Stevie's songs uses a lot of black keys due to being easier to him to locate them using touch instead of sight.

• carlob 5y ago
  I highly doubt that anyone with that level of musical training really needs to look at the keyboard...just like you probably don't while you type.
  • weinzierl 5y ago
    While similar in some ways you can't compare a computer keyboard with a piano keyboard. The piano is linear and long and sometimes you cannot avoid to jump with your hands. No matter how good you are, the further the jump the higher the risk to miss. Performance is a lot about risk reduction, so even the best of the best have a glance sometimes.
    • shirleyquirk 5y ago
      if you ever watch a professional, especially a session musician, sightread, they don't look at the keyboard, even for big strides. it's all muscle-memory. and blind concert pianists play the whole repertoire, not just stuff in Eb.
• weinzierl 5y ago
  That's what I meant when I wrote that his fingerings are pleasant to play and I meant that you don't have to be blind to benefit from the fact that they facilitate easy orientation on the keys. For example Stevie actually plays the main melody of the main riff of Superstition distributed to both of his hands. This allows him to simultaneously play some bass notes with his left and some higher chords with his right hand while completely avoiding to move his hands away from their basic position. His hands never jump. Playing the melody with both hands is unusual and not what most Superstition tutorials show, but it is actually very pleasant and safe because everything just lies under your fingers. The other side of the same coin is that Stevie never had to worry if his music is easy to write and read. That also facilitates playability and maybe emphasizes pleasant movements over looks on a sheet of paper.
  • jeffwass 5y ago
    Fascinating, do you happen to have an example with Stevie's own fingerings of superstition? I'd love to see that.
    • weinzierl 5y ago
      I watched many Youtube videos to figure it out. Thankfully a good soul named Josh FunkKeyStuff Paxton had already written it down and I was glad when I found his detailed analysis. Here is a link to a PDF that another good soul made of Paxton's now lost so called "Superstition dissertation": http://bluefunk.rocks/NonBandPictures/FunkKeyStuff(JoshPaxton)'sDissertationonSuperstitionbyStevieWonder.pdf http://bluefunk.rocks/NonBandPictures/FunkKeyStuff(JoshPaxto...
      • jeffwass 5y ago
        Awesome!
• CPLX 5y ago
  That doesn't really make any sense.