9 ms·

Piano Keys

74 points by gametorch 1y ago

bruce343434 1y ago
On my (accoustic) piano, the black keys are just as wide as the back ends of the white keys. This is achieved by shifting the position of the black keys a bit, instead of centering them right between the white keys.
- o11c 1y ago
  Same, but I had to look. I wonder how badly this affects muscle memory?
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    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.
    - blobbers 1y ago
      Generally speaking fumbling on a piano doesn’t bode well for performance… it’s a little bit like Olympic gymnastics, you only get one chance to stick the landing!
    - blobbers 1y ago
      This is fascinating! I’ve never played a YC seriously, but I have played several Yamahas and currently play on a Kawai and Baldwin. I’ve often wondered if the Baldwin or Yamaha is laid out slightly differently than the Kawai because I feel like playing broken 4 note chords the fingering can feel off on one piano vs another. It’s a slight stretch but the 4-5 on the second 4 note chord can be uncomfortable on the Kawai and comfortable on the Yamaha. I never play them in the same room, one is at my teachers and one at home. Very interesting! Is there a spec for this? Or a layout description? Surely something as precise as piano would note this.
    - Nition 1y ago
      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 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 keys be spaced a little further apart, while also reducing the jump between black key clusters.
      - sefn 1y ago
        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 can be necessary when the hand has to stretch or play both black and white keys. On a real piano, therefore, the C# and D# keys and the F# and A# keys are offset a little from the midpoints of their adjacent white keys. G# is the only black key that is actually at the midpoint of its adjacent white keys. In the photograph of the Yamaha piano, you can see that the cutouts on the D key are symmetrical but less than half the width of a black key because the C# and D# keys are offset. Looking at the G key, the right cutout, at half the width of a black key, is deeper than the cutouts on the D key, so to compensate the left cutout is less deep than the cutouts on the D key. As a consequence, the cutout on the F key is deeper than the cutout on the E key, so the E key is wider at the back than the F key. Similarly, the C key is wider at the back than the B key. As described in the article, on some keyboards just the C and E keys are wider at the back, with D the same width at the back as F, G, A and B. More often, however, the C# and D# keys are placed a little further out to spread the extra width equally between the C, D and E keys.
        Nition 1y ago
        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.
- mlochbaum 1y ago
  The point that the article is addressing (but you have to ignore the image and study the equations to see this!) is that this sort of shifting can't equalize everything. In the span of 3 white keys C to E at the front, you have 2 black keys at the back, so if you take r to be the ratio of back-width to white key front-width then you have 3 = 5r. But in the 4 keys F to B, you've got 3 black keys so 4 = 7r. No single ratio works! So the article investigates various compromises. The B/12 solution is what seems to me the most straightforward, divide white keys in each of the sections C to E and F to B equally at the back, and don't expect anyone to notice the difference.
  - bruce343434 1y ago
    I don't see the problem... Use one unit of width per semitone. Then raise the black keys up a bit. Then for the white keys, elongate them and append some extra stuff on the sides of their fronts so the white keys' fronts' all have one same width as well. They are two separate "problems", not interdependent.
    - teo_zero 1y ago
      > Then for the white keys, [...] append some extra stuff on the sides of their fronts so the white keys' fronts' all have one same width as well. There's no way you can achieve that.
ajuc 1y ago
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.
- tetraodonpuffer 1y ago
  having the keyboard the way it is also allows you to more easily orient yourself, you can feel with the sides of your fingers if you are next to E/F or B/C and with the corner of your eye it's also straightforward to figure it out. I don't think it'd be possible (or anyways even more difficult than it is now) to play large jumps accurately if the whole keyboard looked the same
  - paulgerhardt 1y ago
    I think both of those concerns were addressed by the Dvorak of piano keyboards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard Has the symmetry of GP while large jumps are accomplished by shifting up a row or two. I assume it didn’t take off for the same reason Dvorak didn’t.
  - ajuc 1y ago
    Make a dimple on every C key and paint it red.
    - toast0 1y ago
      That's all fine and dandy, except early apple keyboards have the dimples one key over :p
  - bluGill 1y ago
    There are multiple alterative layout that some advocate for. they generally do sonething else for orintation. putting a bump on middle c and other places.
moefh 1y ago
I always thought the canonical way to place the black keys was to divide the octave in the two parts that have the sequential black keys (C-D-E and F-G-A-B), and then simply place the black keys so they're the same distance away from each other and the edge of the parts. That means that the white keys in each of the groups have "mirrors": for example, C is a mirror of E, D is a mirror of itself (it's the only key like that), F is a mirror of B, and G is a mirror of A. I just looked at the keyboards I have around me (a slightly-above-low-end digital piano, a small midi controller, and a small 90s synth), and they all seem to fit that description. ETA: note that the image in the article doesn't fit this description: for example the D is way too narrow (the black keys around it should be much further apart). ETA2: I just noticed that this seems to be the "B/12 solution" described in the article.
ralfd 1y ago
I didn’t understand this post? More pictures needed?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
prmph 1y ago
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 are trying to make the white key all have the same width at the back, well, why should that matter? Pianists don't press the white keys all the way at the back, do they?
- scarecrw 1y ago
  Yes, you do need to press white keys further back sometimes. Imagine trying to play on black keys with your thumb and pinky finger while playing a white key with your middle finger. You won't be pressing all the way at the back, but your finger will have to press between the black keys.
- sefn 1y ago
  Pianists sometimes do have to play white keys with their fingers between the black keys. For example, if you want to play E flat major (Eb-G-Bb), you might put your thumb on Eb, your little finger on Bb, and then your middle finger on G, right up the back between the black keys. As the keys are parallel, the width of the white keys at the back is the same as the width all the way down to the front of the black keys. Apart from the need to fit the hand to the keyboard, a piano key is a lever and it gives more resistance further back, which may be useful to the pianist in controlling the attack and dynamics. If you place the black keys right in the middle, as you suggest, the space between them is too narrow for a finger, while there is wasted space for those white keys that only have one adjacent black key. So piano makers push the C# and D# keys and the F# and A# keys further apart. The mathematical problem discussed in the article is that there is no way to distribute the space equally between the keys, so various compromises are considered. The "B/12 solution" is practical and widely used. The suggested "optimum arrangement" is amusing to consider but unlikely to be worth the trouble.
- brudgers 1y ago
  Pianists don't press the white keys all the way at the back, do they? The good ones do it all the time because moving the entire hand forward and back can be significantly more fluid than contorting to play another way…the keyboard is three dimensional.
NooneAtAll3 1y ago
I wish the page had a picture with a-b-c-d-... written on the buttons I wish the page had pictures for the proposed widths of the buttons
kazinator 1y ago
I suspect there is no such fussing about "back of white key widths" in actual piano design. What's actually going on, when you look at any piano keyboard, is that the groups of black keys are given a substantially wider spread: they are not exactly centered on the dividing lines between the white keys. What most likely matters to playability is the width of the black keys and this spread amount. Now if you cover the front of the keys (e.g. put your fallboard felt over it) you can visualize the back of all the keys as a kind of barcode: alternating black and white strips, sometimes with two adjacent white strips. It so happens that these semitone strips do look about equal width, thanks to the sizing of the black keys and their spread. It might not be exact though. A good starting configuration might be to start with a keyboard in which all the semitones are strips of equal width. Then we identify the C major keys, and paint them white, making the others black. Next, we shorten the black keys, and adjust the frontage of the white keys to be of equal width. Say, by keeping the division between every B and C exactly where it is and interpolating the others divisions. You will find that the E-F division does not fall exactly halfway between the surrounding black keys, Eb and F#. (That's what's observed on real piano keyboards!)
YangNation 1y ago
[dead]

74 points by gametorch 1y ago

On my (accoustic) piano, the black keys are just as wide as the back ends of the white keys. This is achieved by shifting the position of the black keys a bit, instead of centering them right between the white keys.

o11c 1y ago
Same, but I had to look. I wonder how badly this affects muscle memory?
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  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.
  - blobbers 1y ago
    Generally speaking fumbling on a piano doesn’t bode well for performance… it’s a little bit like Olympic gymnastics, you only get one chance to stick the landing!
  - blobbers 1y ago
    This is fascinating! I’ve never played a YC seriously, but I have played several Yamahas and currently play on a Kawai and Baldwin. I’ve often wondered if the Baldwin or Yamaha is laid out slightly differently than the Kawai because I feel like playing broken 4 note chords the fingering can feel off on one piano vs another. It’s a slight stretch but the 4-5 on the second 4 note chord can be uncomfortable on the Kawai and comfortable on the Yamaha. I never play them in the same room, one is at my teachers and one at home. Very interesting! Is there a spec for this? Or a layout description? Surely something as precise as piano would note this.
  - Nition 1y ago
    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 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 keys be spaced a little further apart, while also reducing the jump between black key clusters.
    - sefn 1y ago
      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 can be necessary when the hand has to stretch or play both black and white keys. On a real piano, therefore, the C# and D# keys and the F# and A# keys are offset a little from the midpoints of their adjacent white keys. G# is the only black key that is actually at the midpoint of its adjacent white keys. In the photograph of the Yamaha piano, you can see that the cutouts on the D key are symmetrical but less than half the width of a black key because the C# and D# keys are offset. Looking at the G key, the right cutout, at half the width of a black key, is deeper than the cutouts on the D key, so to compensate the left cutout is less deep than the cutouts on the D key. As a consequence, the cutout on the F key is deeper than the cutout on the E key, so the E key is wider at the back than the F key. Similarly, the C key is wider at the back than the B key. As described in the article, on some keyboards just the C and E keys are wider at the back, with D the same width at the back as F, G, A and B. More often, however, the C# and D# keys are placed a little further out to spread the extra width equally between the C, D and E keys.
      - Nition 1y ago
        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.
mlochbaum 1y ago
The point that the article is addressing (but you have to ignore the image and study the equations to see this!) is that this sort of shifting can't equalize everything. In the span of 3 white keys C to E at the front, you have 2 black keys at the back, so if you take r to be the ratio of back-width to white key front-width then you have 3 = 5r. But in the 4 keys F to B, you've got 3 black keys so 4 = 7r. No single ratio works! So the article investigates various compromises. The B/12 solution is what seems to me the most straightforward, divide white keys in each of the sections C to E and F to B equally at the back, and don't expect anyone to notice the difference.
- bruce343434 1y ago
  I don't see the problem... Use one unit of width per semitone. Then raise the black keys up a bit. Then for the white keys, elongate them and append some extra stuff on the sides of their fronts so the white keys' fronts' all have one same width as well. They are two separate "problems", not interdependent.
  - teo_zero 1y ago
    > Then for the white keys, [...] append some extra stuff on the sides of their fronts so the white keys' fronts' all have one same width as well. There's no way you can achieve that.

ajuc 1y ago

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.

tetraodonpuffer 1y ago
having the keyboard the way it is also allows you to more easily orient yourself, you can feel with the sides of your fingers if you are next to E/F or B/C and with the corner of your eye it's also straightforward to figure it out. I don't think it'd be possible (or anyways even more difficult than it is now) to play large jumps accurately if the whole keyboard looked the same
- paulgerhardt 1y ago
  I think both of those concerns were addressed by the Dvorak of piano keyboards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard Has the symmetry of GP while large jumps are accomplished by shifting up a row or two. I assume it didn’t take off for the same reason Dvorak didn’t.
- ajuc 1y ago
  Make a dimple on every C key and paint it red.
  - toast0 1y ago
    That's all fine and dandy, except early apple keyboards have the dimples one key over :p
- bluGill 1y ago
  There are multiple alterative layout that some advocate for. they generally do sonething else for orintation. putting a bump on middle c and other places.

moefh 1y ago

I always thought the canonical way to place the black keys was to divide the octave in the two parts that have the sequential black keys (C-D-E and F-G-A-B), and then simply place the black keys so they're the same distance away from each other and the edge of the parts. That means that the white keys in each of the groups have "mirrors": for example, C is a mirror of E, D is a mirror of itself (it's the only key like that), F is a mirror of B, and G is a mirror of A. I just looked at the keyboards I have around me (a slightly-above-low-end digital piano, a small midi controller, and a small 90s synth), and they all seem to fit that description. ETA: note that the image in the article doesn't fit this description: for example the D is way too narrow (the black keys around it should be much further apart). ETA2: I just noticed that this seems to be the "B/12 solution" described in the article.

ralfd 1y ago

I didn’t understand this post? More pictures needed?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

prmph 1y ago

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 are trying to make the white key all have the same width at the back, well, why should that matter? Pianists don't press the white keys all the way at the back, do they?

scarecrw 1y ago
Yes, you do need to press white keys further back sometimes. Imagine trying to play on black keys with your thumb and pinky finger while playing a white key with your middle finger. You won't be pressing all the way at the back, but your finger will have to press between the black keys.
sefn 1y ago
Pianists sometimes do have to play white keys with their fingers between the black keys. For example, if you want to play E flat major (Eb-G-Bb), you might put your thumb on Eb, your little finger on Bb, and then your middle finger on G, right up the back between the black keys. As the keys are parallel, the width of the white keys at the back is the same as the width all the way down to the front of the black keys. Apart from the need to fit the hand to the keyboard, a piano key is a lever and it gives more resistance further back, which may be useful to the pianist in controlling the attack and dynamics. If you place the black keys right in the middle, as you suggest, the space between them is too narrow for a finger, while there is wasted space for those white keys that only have one adjacent black key. So piano makers push the C# and D# keys and the F# and A# keys further apart. The mathematical problem discussed in the article is that there is no way to distribute the space equally between the keys, so various compromises are considered. The "B/12 solution" is practical and widely used. The suggested "optimum arrangement" is amusing to consider but unlikely to be worth the trouble.
brudgers 1y ago
Pianists don't press the white keys all the way at the back, do they? The good ones do it all the time because moving the entire hand forward and back can be significantly more fluid than contorting to play another way…the keyboard is three dimensional.

NooneAtAll3 1y ago

I wish the page had a picture with a-b-c-d-... written on the buttons I wish the page had pictures for the proposed widths of the buttons

kazinator 1y ago

I suspect there is no such fussing about "back of white key widths" in actual piano design. What's actually going on, when you look at any piano keyboard, is that the groups of black keys are given a substantially wider spread: they are not exactly centered on the dividing lines between the white keys. What most likely matters to playability is the width of the black keys and this spread amount. Now if you cover the front of the keys (e.g. put your fallboard felt over it) you can visualize the back of all the keys as a kind of barcode: alternating black and white strips, sometimes with two adjacent white strips. It so happens that these semitone strips do look about equal width, thanks to the sizing of the black keys and their spread. It might not be exact though. A good starting configuration might be to start with a keyboard in which all the semitones are strips of equal width. Then we identify the C major keys, and paint them white, making the others black. Next, we shorten the black keys, and adjust the frontage of the white keys to be of equal width. Say, by keeping the division between every B and C exactly where it is and interpolating the others divisions. You will find that the E-F division does not fall exactly halfway between the surrounding black keys, Eb and F#. (That's what's observed on real piano keyboards!)

YangNation 1y ago

[dead]