Comment by sporkologist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sporkologist | Hacker News Reader

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> Everything is made more arbitrarily complicated when it's represented by its departure from the Ionian mode. It would be much more efficient to use the chromatic scale as a base instead.

Your approach is simply not feasible. Let me demonstrate.

Here are some options:

The newly chromatic keyboard is all white/black/white/black alternated keys, WBWBWBWBWBWB for one octave.

How do you look at that and figure out where C is?

Likewise, a new keyboard can be all white keys. WWWWWWWWWWWW

How do you know where anything is?

We need some patterns in order for our brains to be oriented to the instrument. The pattern of WBWBWWBWBWBW (standard 12-note sequence on keyboards), is a well-understood one that makes it practical for keyboardists to make music.

If there exists a 3rd option which makes orientability and fast muscle memory easier than it is, it needs to be innovated.

You seem to think that making the keyboard more symmetrical, or more uniform, or different somehow, makes it easier to learn. It doesn't work that way. However if you in fact have an improvement not obvious to those in the industry, many players would be thankful for your work. The field of music and music instrument technology is alive and well and waiting for your invention.

Now to address your mode concept..... Your presumption that everything is just Ionian mode transposed is absolutely incorrect. Each different mode (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian (those are all modes of just the major scale)) has its own identity. I'm surprised that you as a musician are unaware/blind to this, or consider it "needless complexity imposed by the vain professional musician community". Also, altered dominants and the various minor modes, in addition to the major scale modes I mentioned. Yes that adds up to probably 300 or 400 scales. Which takes a lot of work, regardless of whether you have a standard keyboard or a WWWWWWWWWWWW keyboard.

> How do you look at that and figure out where C is?

The same way you know which C is "middle C".

Alternatively, color the keys differently.

Alternatively, shape the keys differently, or add a distinguishing part to some, like the nubs most computer keyboards put on f and j keys.

> We need some patterns in order for our brains to be oriented to the instrument.

Yes, but they don't need to be messy ones. Consider a guitar: excluding the two thinnest strings, each string is tuned exactly 5 semitones up from the last. Each fret is one half-step up. Guitar players don't get lost!

> You seem to think that making the keyboard more symmetrical, or more uniform, or different somehow, makes it easier to learn.

Yes, and for good reason. It means the student can skip learning 11/12ths of the required muscle memory. That's a very significant, and very measurable gain.

> The field of music and music instrument technology is alive and well and waiting for your invention.

That remains to be seen. In fact, the very article we are discussing shows how difficult it is to make the world-changing introduction of a piano with slightly smaller keys.

> Also, altered dominants and the various minor modes, in addition to the major scale modes I mentioned. Yes that adds up to probably 300 or 400 scales. Which takes a lot of work, regardless of whether you have a standard keyboard or a WWWWWWWWWWWW keyboard.

And then you multiply that 400 by twelve, and you learn just how much muscle memory is required to play the piano.

Since you seem to think this is such an impossible task, note that it has already been accomplished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w

The only way Janko's keyboard is not fundamentally superior is that it isn't widely available.

> Guitar players don't get lost!

What an extraordinary claim.

> Yes, and for good reason. It means the student can skip learning 11/12ths of the required muscle memory. That's a very significant, and very measurable gain.

That seems to make sense. Unfortunately you can't provide any proof or evidence. I could claim that my one-key keyboard with 88 transposition buttons was superior, but I don't, because it's not.

> Unfortunately you can't provide any proof or evidence.

I just did. Mathematical proof.

How much evidence must I provide your condescending sensibilities? Do I have to hunt you down, sit you in front of a Janko keyboard, and force you to learn?

> I just did. Mathematical proof.

Is that right. I don't recall seeing any theorems, lemmas, axioms, or really anything resembling proving anything, mathematical or not, but I have seen a lot of blustery naïve rhetoric. Just saying an accordion-nightmare keyboard is better, does not make it so. Please pardon me if I remain skeptical.

> How much evidence must I provide

How about a study that addresses your claim: "It means the student can skip learning 11/12ths of the required muscle memory. That's a very significant, and very measurable gain."

You are making a big claim here. Not sure why you're surprised that someone is asking for clarification.

> The only way Janko's keyboard is not fundamentally superior is that it isn't widely available.

One could make that claim about literally anything. Maybe it just didn't resonate with the people who would have wanted to make it work. It's kind of Darwinistic, some ideas catch on and others are dismissed out of hand because they look like an accordionist's nightmare.

> messy

God forbid that complex things are messy. They are, until you learn the system and can have mastery over it. You only have 1/12th the work to do as us normal musicians, so it should be much easier for you.

> The same way you know which C is "middle C".

No, because you just dismissed the traditional map for keyboardists.

> the student can skip learning 11/12ths of the required muscle memory. That's a very significant, and very measurable gain.

Citation needed

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