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I play the piano professionally. The issue with these unorthodox keyboard layouts is that the repertoire of the Common Practice Period (“classical music”) is wr

I play the piano professionally. The issue with these unorthodox keyboard layouts is that the repertoire of the Common Practice Period (“classical music”) is written in a way that assumes the conventional keyboard geography. I can imagine certain reaches, for example, that are manageable only because the relationship between keys is just so. I’d be interested in seeing the Schumann Symphonic Etudes played on this piano. The last variation has running passages in chords that span over an octave. If the keys are monospaced, I don’t see how such intervals would be played by humans.

weinzierl 1y ago
I am far from professional playing but I think it is a rite de passage for every piano player going from "What was wrong with the people who came up with this layout" to "These asymmetries are more blessing than curse". To add a little context. To the layman a piano keyboard looks pretty regular, there is only this slight oddity with a block two and a block of three black keys. For the player on the other hand this slight irregularity makes almost everything kind of irregular in a sense. For example if you play all the all white key triads you get mostly minor and major triads - mostly because one of them is diminished chord. Or if you look at the patterns of black and white keys when you move a certain chord type through all the keys - it's a mess. But it's a mess you can memorize and as a reward you will never get lost.
bluGill 1y ago
There is a lot of great music written before the classical period that used unorthodox keyboards. Quarter comma mean tone with 15 notes per octave instead of today's 12 was fairly popular and a lot of music from then doesn't sound right on modern keyboards. For that matter much modern music sounds bad but we are used to it. (and 15 notes per octave is a compromise itself, but they didn't know how to build micro tonal keyboards)
vintermann 1y ago
The first major isomophic keyboard, Jankó's, was allegedly praised by Liszt. But not enough for him to start all over again. Jankó was a more than competent pianist himself, and had thought about these issues. You can reach everything you can on a normal keyboard and many things you can't, and the multiple ways to play the same tone gives plenty of ways to solve fingering challenges as well. The problem is no one is used to it, and no one wants to start out with it since instruments with the layout are extremely rare.
jerf 1y ago
Music for an instrument co-evolves with the instrument itself. If an isomorphic piano pushes music co-evolved with a conventional layout out of reach, it would equally bring music that hasn't been written because it works poorly with a conventional layout but works with the isomorphic layout into reach. And yet some other layout would push some things out of reach but bring other things into reach. Which is to say, it isn't a surprise that music co-evolved with a particular instrument might be difficult on some other one; it's the expected, perfectly normal, perfectly predictable result, and isn't really a criticism of the new instrument. Unless you're willing to equally criticize the conventional instrument for all the music it can't play very well, but then, even so, it's a very symmetric criticism in the end and doesn't amount to much.

weinzierl 1y ago

I am far from professional playing but I think it is a rite de passage for every piano player going from "What was wrong with the people who came up with this layout" to "These asymmetries are more blessing than curse". To add a little context. To the layman a piano keyboard looks pretty regular, there is only this slight oddity with a block two and a block of three black keys. For the player on the other hand this slight irregularity makes almost everything kind of irregular in a sense. For example if you play all the all white key triads you get mostly minor and major triads - mostly because one of them is diminished chord. Or if you look at the patterns of black and white keys when you move a certain chord type through all the keys - it's a mess. But it's a mess you can memorize and as a reward you will never get lost.

bluGill 1y ago

There is a lot of great music written before the classical period that used unorthodox keyboards. Quarter comma mean tone with 15 notes per octave instead of today's 12 was fairly popular and a lot of music from then doesn't sound right on modern keyboards. For that matter much modern music sounds bad but we are used to it. (and 15 notes per octave is a compromise itself, but they didn't know how to build micro tonal keyboards)

vintermann 1y ago

The first major isomophic keyboard, Jankó's, was allegedly praised by Liszt. But not enough for him to start all over again. Jankó was a more than competent pianist himself, and had thought about these issues. You can reach everything you can on a normal keyboard and many things you can't, and the multiple ways to play the same tone gives plenty of ways to solve fingering challenges as well. The problem is no one is used to it, and no one wants to start out with it since instruments with the layout are extremely rare.

jerf 1y ago

Music for an instrument co-evolves with the instrument itself. If an isomorphic piano pushes music co-evolved with a conventional layout out of reach, it would equally bring music that hasn't been written because it works poorly with a conventional layout but works with the isomorphic layout into reach. And yet some other layout would push some things out of reach but bring other things into reach. Which is to say, it isn't a surprise that music co-evolved with a particular instrument might be difficult on some other one; it's the expected, perfectly normal, perfectly predictable result, and isn't really a criticism of the new instrument. Unless you're willing to equally criticize the conventional instrument for all the music it can't play very well, but then, even so, it's a very symmetric criticism in the end and doesn't amount to much.