White Keys vs Black Keys

[HiEnergy]

On a church organ the white keys are for weddings and the black keys for funerals.

[Numanoid]

Lay Lady Lay, can jam along to the verse with decending one finger note riff A G# G F#

[Numanoid]

Pentatonic Blues

Yes, you are right, that didn't occur to me

A funky blues riff would be

A C D D# E G A
A C D C A
A C D D# E G A
E G E D# D C G A

[rp314]

Black Keys + orange:

I think Nicolas Slonimsky was the first to do that. There was a clip of him playing it in some documentary I saw back in the day...

Mr. Slonimsky's entertaining style was reflected in his other activities. A favorite party trick -- one he performed at an Alice Tully Hall tribute to him in 1987 and also on the "Tonight Show" -- was to play the melody line of the Chopin "Black Key" Etude by rolling an orange across the keys. Seemingly open to musical experiences of all kinds, he performed some of his own music at a Frank Zappa concert in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1981 and maintained a friendship with the iconoclastic rock composer. He named his cat Grody-to-the-Max, after learning the expression from Zappa's daughter, Moon Unit

http://www.bruceduffie.com/slonimsky.html

Slonimsky is, of course, better remembered for his books and his work conducting 20th century music, including premiering many works (such as Varese's Ionisation which was dedicated to him).

[NerdMcBoon]

Pentatonic Blues

Yes, you are right, that didn't occur to me

Pretty much all Boards of Canada tracks are pentatonic. It's a big part of their sound.

[db3]

Pick one and stick to it and you should be good

[flakes2]

The inverted scheme with black keys looks nice. But in practise i think it's more difficult to see

[AutoTonic]

Hey. I've created myself a new – sort of Autotuning – MIDI transposer called AutoTonic Note Transposer which allows you to map various scales onto the white keys of your MIDI keyboard in realtime (I mean instantly and without looking at your computer screen at all) by using the black keys as keyswitches. That way you can always play only on the white keys and focus more on your playing rather than scale patterns …

Also, by using the RAW MIDI-protocol, it is fully compatible to any other mac or win based DAW, Virtual Instrument, Outboard Gear, MIDI destination etc., has a lot more other sophisticated controls, functions and also the option to manage your scales records in a Music Theory Library … there are even many more features and potential usages you really should discover then on your own …



I am btw an off-mainstream indie-developer from Vienna and I've put lots of efforts into creating this … maybe it's something you want to consider, maybe it helps … if not at least you know now it exists too. Thanks for your time with all of my respect, Clemens.

PS: If you need help with the MIDI-Setup or anything else you can always reach out to me also here: support@autotonic.net

[A_SN]

This is why I hate keyboards. Untrained people play them and learn nothing, just that "white keys sound normal and boring and black keys sound funny". It's like you can play in A minor/C major for years without understanding what or why, and if you want to do anything else it gets suddenly more complicated.

[sjm]

The thing about the piano - and one big reason why I think only playing white keys is a bad idea - is that unlike most other instruments, there is a signficant difference in hand position depending on what key you are playing in (and also what scale you are using, a blues scale is different to a major scale). This is because of how the keys are arranged with the black keys recessed and two white notes immediately adjacent to each other (B/C and E/F).

The upshot of this is that different scales encourage different playing styles because the different hand positions make different hand movements easier/more difficult. It's easy to play a C9 with your thumb holding down D and E, it's not so easy to hold down two black keys with one thumb because of the space between them. I find it easier to play riffs on C D Eb E than Gb Ab A Bb because your middle finger is your longest finger. It's comfortable to play C, D and E with your thumb and second finger, and the Eb with your middle finger, as it is a pretty natural hand position. Playing G with the middle finger and F#, G# and A# with thumb and second finger is awkward. So I'm much more likely to go for a bluesy approach in C or G than in F#.

In practical terms, this means that playing in different keys will encourage you to try different approaches and discover new things for yourself. If you spend your whole life only playing white keys, you are handicapping yourself to your own detriment. And I shudder to think of what kind of workarounds you'd need for songs that use more than just a standard 7 note scale, have borrowed notes and incidentals or change key signature half way through. And by extension, you are shutting yourself out of ever writing music that is more interesting, because you can't play it, ergo will never come up with it. It's like having a whole palette of paints at your disposal but only ever using the brown paint to make art.

Playing in different keys on the keyboard really isn't hard. It just takes a bit or practice. And once you have got the hang of it, it'll make you 10 times the player you were before.

[fmr]

Playing in different keys on the keyboard really isn't hard. It just takes a bit or practice. And once you have got the hang of it, it'll make you 10 times the player you were before.

I think it would be better to first learn what the black keys are there for, e.g., the different tonalities, how they are built, etc. You don't play with back keys, or white keys, or any combination just because it's cool.

The keyboard is as it is since circa 1.000 years. It wasn't born with the piano, and the smaller keys aren't as they are just because someone suddenly remembered to do it like that. Everything in there is as it is for a reason. It's THAT reason that must be learned, first and before anything else (tonalities, major/minor, intervals, circle of fifths, transposition, etc.).

[flakes2]

The piano keyboard is a very logic way of showing the musical scale. But not completely Logic. All halftones should have an equal distance on the layout. The black keys should not be mapped on top above the white ones.

It should more look like this:

WWBWBWWBWBWBW

But i think the way it is is more easy to grab chords

[fmr]

The piano keyboard is a very logic way of showing the musical scale. But not completely Logic. All halftones should have an equal distance on the layout. The black keys should not be mapped on top above the white ones.

It should more look like this:

WWBWBWWBWBWBW

But i think the way it is is more easy to grab chords

As I said, the keyboard is as it is because it was created hundreds of years ago, BEFORE tonality and equal temperament. The white keys are the natural sounds, the ones used to sing ALL the church modes. The black keys are the altered sounds, the ones that were used to alter the natural sounds, and started to be used with the "music ficta" practice, from the fourteenth century onwards.

So, it is as it is for a reason. And the reason is a strong one (and it's not because of chords - chords were extraneous to its creation).

[flakes2]

In other countries there are also other musical tonailiies with more than 2 halftone steps per octave.

[fmr]

In other countries there are also other musical tonailiies with more than 2 halftone steps per octave.

So? Did these countries create keyboards?