Janco keyboard

[Tom Sivak]

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