Demonstration of 4-Row Janko Keyboard (1986) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Demonstration of 4-Row Janko Keyboard (1986) [video]

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92 pointsvo2maxer38 comments

I made an android app that implements isomorphic note layouts. They can be divided to hexagonal tiling (harmonic table layout, Wicki-Hayden layout, Janko) and rectangular tiling (bass/violin/mandolin fretboard).

The app does not allow choosing between those layouts, because customization stands in way of creativity. You can still customize anything by modifying code and have it interpreted on phone without re-compiling anything. To recreate Janko, you would modify hexpad.lua and set NE interval to 1 and N interval to -1. Here's the code https://github.com/jmiskovic/hexpress

The appeal of isomorphic lauyout is that everything you learn (intervals, scales & modes, chords, progressions, riffs) can be applied across all keys. Some musical patterns become more obvious and learning becomes less tedious. Another nice benefit is that such layouts are mostly two-dimensional, so they make good use of small screens.

I have a Chromatone keyboard, with its 6-row Janko layout. The top row is really part of a chromatic run section at the top (you can just run your finger along and play all the notes). Looks like they're still giving them away for shipping only: https://www.chromatone.jp/online-shop/en.html

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668900

Quoting myself (no real updates since then - too busy with work):

It looks like it has an enormous number of keys, but they are linked together, with each horizontal position being a note, and 3-4 "buttons" on the same physical lever for each note. This makes fingerings very flexible. The closer spacing of the key layout means you can reach bigger chords more easily - I can comfortably play a 10th, for example. The layout is isomorphic, so transposing is as simple as shifting your hands along.

I have played (standard) piano for over 30 years, and this was immediately intuitive for anything melodic. I am far from an expert yet, but the biggest difficulty has been the lack of colours on the keys, which makes it hard to jump big intervals, or play the same note in different octaves in both hands. The lack of colours is because keys don't play a fixed note; the whole keyboard can be transposed by pressing a couple of buttons. Also, because the layout is isomorphic and they were trying to get away from the traditional note system. I am planning to try different colourings with masking tape or post-its, but I wish it had an RGB led for each key (not sure I can justify the effort of rigging that up).

The layout itself is great, and is the reason to buy this. Everything else is less great, and really shows its age (I have the newer model, the CT-312, which dates from something like 2007). The biggest hardware deficiency is the lack of a sustain pedal input, but I expect I can find a way around that with MIDI out or by rigging something up with the (toggle!) sustain button on the control panel. The sound synthesis is also pretty poor, but again, MIDI out.

The best thing about the Chromatone in comparison to all these other alternative keyboards, is that it's (1) Available, and (2) Free! They're clearing out old stock or something, so all I paid was shipping from Japan.

> but I wish it had an RGB led for each key

You only need an LED per column and you could simply put two strips on there, one along the top and another along the bottom.

I also have a Chromatone, it got held up in customs for over 6 months but it finally arrived a few weeks ago but I have not yet had the time to put significant hours into learning to play it. But even the little bit that I did do was very intuitive.

Would you suggest the Chromatone for a tone-deaf drummer who's never touched a piano in his life? Or is it better to learn the traditional piano first?

I think in your case it would be better to learn a traditional keyboard layout. There's way more training material and the fingering is a simpler (fewer choices). It also lets you just go to some other place and play the piano there (I think this is the main reason Janko didn't catch on).

I think Janko might be a good first keyboard layout for a guitarist or other stringed instrument player.

I just built a 6 row Janko keyboard as a retrofit for an existing keyboard or piano. It was a lot of work to make a layout that can be used that way and that is mechanically simple and reliable. The Janko layout makes playing the piano as easy as playing the guitar, everything transposes with ease and patterns have to be memorized only once.

That said, the piano/keyboard world is super conservative and people have literally invested a lifetime in the familiar layout so even if a Janko keyboard would be better on all measurable dimensions (and it isn't, though there really are a lot of advantages) it is an uphill battle to get any appreciable mind/market share.

See also: Dvorak and driving on the left hand side of the road, imperial versus metric and more of those irrational and yet immovable discussions.

> The Janko layout makes playing the piano as easy as playing the guitar

As easy as playing the guitar in the all-fourths tuning.

> people have literally invested a lifetime in the familiar layout

They've already learnt twelve versions of every scale; you wouldn't think one more would be much to ask.

I agree with most of these examples except for the side of the road one, which is truly arbitrary - at least in island nations.

I’ve driven in both left and right driving nations, the experience is fundamentally identical.

It's my experience, being right handed, that it's easier to tackle spatial problems center/right than center/left.

I've always assumed this was a common experience. If so, left and right hand drive are not identical.

But which hand would you prefer to shift with? Manual transmissions are still popular in many countries.

I am in the US but drive a Japanese Domestic Market truck, so the steering wheel is on the right side and I shift left handed. Someone who learns to shift right handed will pick up shifting left handed within 1 hour. The brain flips it all remarkably easily. The harder muscle memory to break is the turn signal and windshield wipers being swapped.

I actually think what I am doing (a right-hand drive vehicle in a drive-on-the-right country) is the easiest, because parallel parking is so much easier when you are driving on the same side as the street curb. And being able to get in and out of my vehicle from the sidewalk is nice.

I can drive both left and right hand side. It all works great but if I switch frequently and I need to downshift for turns and sit on the right hand side invariably I'll hit the door really hard. I can't seem to get that bit reprogrammed to the point that it is not happening.

I'd rather shift with my left, so my right can steer. Back when I drove auto, I'd often drive with just my right hand on the wheel, it felt completely natural. It took me a while to get used to left hand only, and I'm much more likely to have both hands on the wheel now. Aside from the argument that maybe I should always use both hands, my point is just that it's probably better for right handed people to shift with their left hand since it requires less dexterity.

> my point is just that it's probably better for right handed people to shift with their left hand since it requires less dexterity.

Does everybody here agree this is generally the case with righties? I ask because I'm right handed. I bat right, write with my right hand, use my right thumb on my phone, etc. I'm not a switch hitter or ambidextrous in any way. I'm full-on right side dominant. But, I wear my watch on my right hand and I use my left hand to steer.

Is this sort of thing common? Do the vast majority of right-handed people wear their watch on their left wrist? Or is it an untested assumption?

Interesting. I'll chime in.

I'm also right-dominant: right-handed writing, right-handed batting—but I'm left-handed hockey (though somewhat ambidextrous), and I am very comfortable steering with my left, but can really do either. Though I'm more comfortable steering with my left with my hand at the side of the wheel (9 o'clock) or at the bottom, under-handed (~7 o'clock). And I wear my watch on my left. I always thought that was common, but maybe more dogma than anything.

I think which wrist you wear your watch on is not (directly) related to handedness. I'm right-handed and started out wearing my watch on my right wrist since I was fairly young and didn't know that was uncommon. Many years later I tried switching to my left wrist. It felt weird at first, but it didn't take long to adjust. Now it feels weird to have it on my right wrist.

(It's also nice to have it on my left wrist while I write etc).

This reminds me of the left hand buttons on the accordion (which play chords). They're arranged in the order of the circle of fifths, so you can instantly transpose to any key just by shifting your starting note and playing the same physical pattern - at least, until you run out of buttons at one edge or the other. It makes it much easier to play chords by ear compared to the piano (at least, for me).

On a traditional keyboard the second row of keys ("sharps", typically black) are not only displaced further away from the player than the white keys, they are also higher. This facilitates thumb crossings, playing passages in thirds, makes common chords more comfortable, and so on. It seems these advantages are lost with this alternative keyboard. Ease of transposition is not a big advantage for a trained musician, who should be able to do it well for other reasons (like reading orchestral scores), and the contexts in which it might be useful are pretty small (accompanying a singer, pretty much).

>Ease of transposition is not a big advantage for a trained musician

"Fast typing with QWERTY is not a problem for a trained touch typist".

Only once the cost of training has been amortised, through endless hours of practice. This alternative design makes transposition trivial, and enables many other types of playing by offering more alternatives for chords, note relationships, etc.

Aside from manufacturing difficulties, standardization, etc (which make sense as difficulties) I never could understand the Stockhold syndrome with the prevalent designs being considered good for what they are. They are not any kind of optimal or best-compromise, just historical accidents.

>makes common chords more comfortable

This reverses cause and effect.

It's not like there are common chords people like and the piano makes it easier to play them. It's the reverse: the piano makes it easier to play certain chords, so people have resorted to using them more, making them more "common". They're common because the piano forces them on you. (Guitarists have similar common chords they prefer to write to, because the guitar design and standard tuning make them easier).

This alternative design frees people from having to accept some chords as easier making all chords equally easy and equally transportable. In fact easier, as there are multiple fingerings to chose from.

>and the contexts in which it might be useful are pretty small (accompanying a singer, pretty much).

That leaves out jazz, which uses transposition all the time (singer or not), and of course downplays accompanying a signer, which is what 99% of professional keyboard players do. The world has more bands and honky tonks than classical pianists.

And it's not like such a keyboard like Janko or the Chromatone is some wild design that only some inventor and 10 fans use.

Historically tons of accordionists (in Eastern Europe and Latin America) play similar keyboard designs...

One question, out of curiosity, is the chromatic button accordion at all popular in Latino music? I know they play a lot of button accordion (not counting the bandoneon, the popular free reed instrument in Argentinian tango), but from what I've seen it's exclusively a keyed button accordion, e.g not chromatic and has none of the transposition benefits of the chromatic, which is, as you pointed out, the dominant style in Eastern Europe and Russia (where it's called a bayan).

But if Latino musicians are playing chromatic button accordion too, that's cool.

>is the chromatic button accordion at all popular in Latino music?

It's mostly diatonic accordions (and bandoneons, etc) in Latin music, but chromatic (including piano style accordions) also make their appearance.

It's really not a big deal. A few years of playing every scale and chord progressions in every key back when I was 10 years old, and solfege training with "movable do" and now I can play anything in any key.

>A few years of playing every scale and chord progressions in every key back when I was 10 years old, and solfege training with "movable do" and now I can play anything in any key.

"A few years of training", "playing every scale and chord progressions", and "solfege training" is "not a big deal"?

What would be a "big deal" then? Lifelong devotion to play Mary Had A Little Lamb?

It's so natural that I'm skeptical that there is any additional cognitive burden for a trained player on the traditional system vs a trained player on the Janko system. Perhaps even the reverse

The Janko system would work very well with solmization, as opposed to the usual kind of solfege. The relevant difference is that in solmization all half-step intervals (including those that are introduced via accidentals!) are always read as mi-fa. These half-steps are precisely the intervals that are treated specially in Janko and other isomorphic keyboards, compared to the diatonic standard.

Do you have a link? The Wikipedia article on solmization says it's just the process of naming notes with syllables and that solfege is the most common form of it.

https://www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/solmization The wikipedia articles on solmization and hexachords are not very good unfortunately.

The cognitive burden is inherent in the "training" of the trained player. So whether there's an "additional cognitive burden for a trained player" is a moot point.

This is about reducing the training burden.

And of course the limitations (e.g. of movement between notes, where there's only a single path in the traditional keyboard) are objective and not arguable.

Sharps are also higher in this keyboard, what makes you think they aren't?

All keys appear to be on the same plane in the video.

I think each row has a small step up here. Most Janko keyboards have a larger step up, and have the advantages you mention but more so, as the next row up is the same as the next row down.

I love the Janko keyboard. I made an iPhone version (never released) in 2009, and I still use a monome version I also created. The monome version doesn't have the staggered keys in every other row, but it's still quite usable and retains the same properties with chord shapes always being the same in every key.

I tried visualizing what playing a d major scale would look like on that keyboard, and it doesn’t seem any more obvious than on a normal keyboard...

The shape of it will look just like a C-major scale, or any other major scale. Of course, in the process you will traverse the same pattern of white/black keys as on a regular piano, so visually it will be different. I guess that is a trade-off that janko makes to stay closer to what people know. But once you know how to play any type of scale, the fingerings simply shift up/down the keyboard to choose the specific scale of that type.

There are other methods of color coding keyboards. Here is an example of coloring a chromatone keyboard (very similar in concept) with multiple patterns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAec7LyFJW0

In a different video, this guy phrased the appeal of these keyboards like this: it's like playing in the most awkward key you can imagine. But then there's only that one key to learn, and all others are just shifted.

edited to add stuff and clarify. sorry, should really take time to re-read before posting. :P

The point isn't that a single scale is 'more obvious', the point is that they are all the same.

All of the patterns repeat, you can start any piece on any note and play it blind and it will work instead of having 12 different ways of doing it.

Also the "Muto Music Method": it's not just that the common keyboard finger positions aren't the same in 12 different scales, the notation could also be made without all these # and "b" (sorry HN filters out the flat sign U+266D from the text) and without the shapes of the melodies changing:

https://muto-method.com/en/issue.html

"The problems with 5 line notation"

I've found the page thanks to user mkl mentioning Chromatone keyboard here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTRtCgaAEDE

is really neat

It's trivially more obvious. And when you've played it you can automatically play any other major scale.

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