4 ms·

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,

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.
    - Nition 1y ago
      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.
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.

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.
  - Nition 1y ago
    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.

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.