Ed, you make a great point that I had not thought of. By making the keyboard feel the same you take away the ability to feel your way around the keyboard without looking down. Years ago, back when I made my living playing and conducting, I had an interesting experience related to this. Interesting to me, anyway. I was playing some auditions for an acting company where I had to sight-read and accompany the actor/singers who were auditioning. The pianos that one must play on in these kinds of situations can be a joke. This piano, horribly out of tune and regulation, also had a missing ebony on F#2. I found myself missing a lot of bass notes, white notes, because of this. I kept playing G2, thinking it was C2. (Because G2 was now next to two black keys.) I never realized how much I used touch to find my way around the keyboard. The uniformity of this keyboard would be a huge detriment. Tom Sivak Chicago ed440 at mindspring.com wrote: Edwin Good devotes about 8 pages to the Janko keyboard in _Giraffes, Black Dragons and Other Pianos_. It was an attempt to "rationalize" the keyboard. For example, on a Janko keyboard all major scales are played with the same fingering, and they all feel the same to the hand. What Janko did not consider is that the topography of a traditional keyboard has a lot to do with expression and musical understanding in playing the piano. And by making every key and chord feel the same to the hands, it required a lot more looking to find your way around the "easier to play" keyboard, making sight reading more difficult! If this were an original Janko keyboard, it would be a collector's item, maybe a museum piece. As a 20th Century retrofit, it's value is hard to imagine. EBay is a remarkable educational resource....and it's free...as long as you don't bid. Ed Sutton > >----- Original Message ----- > >Whoa, check this out! I've never seen anything like this before! I know >that typewriter keyboards have been reinvented for faster speed and yet no >one uses them because everybody's in a rut. > > > >Now I know how they feel. > > > >Item number: 140067612730 > > > >Tom Sivak > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20061225/7e98a581/attachment.html
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