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A comment on Piano Keys. Parent comment

Re:Piano Keys by Nition on Saturday July 19, 2025 @07:09PM (#44620331)
With the irregular layout we have now, some keys are easy (e.g. C) and some are hard (e.g. B). If you make the layout regular, putting a black note between every white note, then every key becomes the same, but also quite hard, because every major scale is now played like this: https://i.imgur.com/6EmW8eU.gif

It's not a particularly good tradeoff. If you got rid of the black keys entirely instead, you'd have to remember which keys to skip. Harder for beginners than just playing in C.

There is the Janko keyboard though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_keyboard

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Re:Piano Keys by drabbiticus on Sunday July 20, 2025 @03:19AM (#44622716)
That regular layout also makes it likely to feel better to the hand to play diminished or augmented chords, while comparatively punishing major/minor chords. It would be an odd choice considering the traditions of western music.

There's also something to be said about each key having a specific motor pattern/spatial layout. Sure, it makes it harder to move knowledge of one key into another, but during playing it also makes it easier to not accidentally completely change the key unless you mean to. It's all tradeoffs.

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Re:Piano Keys by sambapa on Sunday July 20, 2025 @04:11AM (#44622964)
C is one of the hardest keys to play in on the piano
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Re:Piano Keys by Nition on Sunday July 20, 2025 @06:23AM (#44623668)
Can you elaborate on your thinking here? I really feel C is the easiest (in standard major tonality - obviously C minor, blues scale etc are a different story).
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Re:Piano Keys by Macha on Sunday July 20, 2025 @07:27AM (#44624119)
It's the easiest to learn because it's just the white keys in sequence.

It's not the most physically comfortable to play because your hand is not a rectangle.

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