Janco keyboard

[Frank Emerson]

Hi Tom, et al,

As hideous and ridiculous as it first appears, there was some sensible thinking behind the Janco keyboard.  By shifting between the keyboards and starting points on the keyboard, every scale in every key could be played with the same fingering pattern.  It's sort of like a transposing keyboard, where you only have to learn to play in the key of C, and yet you can actually play in any key.  Mechanically, it is quite interesting.  Many of the keys on different "manuals" are actually attached to a single key stick (level.)  It clearly would be easier for a beginner to learn to  play on such a keyboard, but what teach is going to start a beginner on such a keyboard, after spending a lifetime learning how to perform on a keyboard that had become the standard over hundreds of years?  As with the Dvorak typewriter keyboard, they both had real advantages, but there was no hope of them being adopted when thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of users had invested countless hours learning to perform their respective tasks on the standard arrangement of keys.

Merry Christmas to all!
Frank Emerson
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