Comment by ToJans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ToJans | Hacker News Reader

I watched a piano/music teaching video from the 60s yesterday that made it all "click" [1]

Most modern music chords patterns are easy to find out on piano.

Start on any of the white keys, and play 7 white keys left to right. That is called a mode: a series of notes separated by certain intervals to compose a song.

Different modes have different vibes. Atmosphere of the song ( sad or happy) is directly correlated by how "willing" the notes are to resolve to the mode root (the first key of 7 you hit).

Now, take a 1-3-5 grip on the white keys (press one key, skip one, press one, skip one, press one). That is called the first chord. Move one to the right, and do it again. That is the second chord. One more to the right is the third etc.

Most popular songs are composed by using mostly the same repeating chord patterns:

- 1-5-1-4 (first, fifth, first, fourth)

- 1-4-5

- 1-5-6-4

If you experiment a little bit with this, you will instantly recognize a lot of songs, although they might be pitched higher or lower.

One step further, is learning different chord fingerings: we started with 1-3-5 which mostly results in a major or minor chord in a mode.

- 5th chords are 1-5

- 7th chords are 1-3-5-7

- sus2 is 1-2-5

- sus4 is 1-4-5

- etc

Now, the next thing you need to learn is to transpose: move songs up or down one or more keys to the left or right, but also taking into account the black keys when moving up/down. This will allow you to play along with a song in the perfect key (starting note of a scale)

There's other things (like modulating modes in songs), but this should give you a headstart.

[1] https://youtu.be/g7oA1-y0EJE

Edit: layout and some extra clarification

Ever since I learned that the frequency ratio between adjacent keys on a piano is always a constant twelfth root of 2 regardless of whether you're going black-white or white-white, I've been sort of frustrated with the way pianos are designed. Transposing a song to a different key could have been effortless if keys were structured differently, such as with uniformly alternating white and black keys, rather than the 2 black 3 black groups we have now. By optimizing pianos for C major / A minor, we've made everything else so much more difficult. And no other instrument does this afaik. String instruments don't obscure the constant ratios at all, so it's easier to transpose songs on them.

I suspect someone may reply to this with "it'd be harder to keep track of what notes you're on if keys were uniform like that", but I don't think we actually rely on feeling the keys to know where we are. Would be willing to be proven wrong on that. But I suspect simply coloring/shading each fifth and octave differently should do the job, maybe also texturing them differently for the blind.

Guitar and stringed instruments are easy to transpose because there are no "blessed" notes (other than the open strings, but even those can be turned nonstandard).

It is so annoying that standard guitar tuning isn't all perfect fourths and we've decided to throw in a major third between the G-B strings. Bar chords be damned, I want to be able to visualize it symmetrically and have chord shapes that work the same across the fretboard.

You also want open chords. There’s nothing stopping you from tuning the way you describe you’ll find it much harder to play harmony that’s musical if you do though.

You might like the Linnstrument:

https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument

As a longtime guitarist myself, I found it quite easy to learn.

You can think of each row as a guitar string. In the default setup, each row is a perfect fourth above the row below. The green lights are the white keys on a piano; the unlighted keys are the black ones. The blue lights are C natural.

Skip a square diagonally up and to the right for an octave.

Chord shapes are uniform across the whole surface.

Keys are sensitive to pressure, left-right movement, and top-bottom movement. In the default configuration, rocking left and right yields vibrato and moving top-bottom controls some other MIDI parameter (usually filter cutoff, but it's configurable).

Sliding finger pressure to different keys to the right and left gives portamento. Sliding to the next row up or down gives legato.

Once you get used to these parameters, it becomes super expressive.

It's a MIDI controller, not a complete instrument, so you need a MIDI-controllable source of sounds. It's an MPE instrument, so, if you want the full experience, you want some kind of MPE-capable source of sounds (MPE is "MIDI Polyphonic Expression", and it means that multiple MIDI channels are dedicated to the instrument in order to give full, separate expression to each of several voices). MPE is a relatively new MIDI development that is not supported everywhere yet, so you have to pay attention to which sound devices support it if you want the full experience.

I have one; it's my favorite electronic instrument that I've ever tried. I also have an Eigenharp Pico, and I like it, but I like the Linnstrument better. (It doesn't look as cool as an Eigenharp, though :-).

When I decided to get one, I discovered that they're a bit hard to buy. Not very many places have them, and when I was looking, even Roger Linn didn't have any available. I eventually found one for list price at Detroit Modular (https://www.detroitmodular.com/).

I watched the LinnStrumentalist video per your first link. Amazing stuff. And it does seem to reduce the amount of finger contortion required compared to most keyed or stringed instruments.

It does, though, seem to demand that the player look at the keyboard. For an instrumentalist, this may not be a big deal. For a performer accustomed to connecting to his audience with his face, as do many singers, it seems like a big drawback.

That said, color me amazed.

Yes, the Eigenharp is easier to play without looking, but I can say a couple of things about the need to look at the Linnstrument.

I've only had mine for a few weeks, but the need to look at it seems to be slowly disappearing. Now, the surface does feel really uniform, which is not so helpful for that. As you probably expect, there's not much on it that you can use to orient your hands by touch. Still, I do seem to be gaining some ability to know where my fingers go without looking. Partly it seems to be just acquiring a feel for how far apart the keys are (and you can feel the boundaries between keys). Part of it is starting to know which keys I'm touching from the pitches it's producing.

The second thing is that I've seen videos of players who attach a guitar strap and sling it over their shoulders (it comes with the attachments for that), playing it flat against their chests.

Taking those two things together, I'm fairly confident that it's possible to learn to navigate the keyboard by feel.

I haven't tried the over-the-shoulder thing, myself. So far, I play it on a table like a piano, or like a lap steel guitar or dobro.

I find it easy to learn, both comfortable, and expressive, and it's quickly become my favorite MIDI controller. I prefer it over both piano-style keyboards and MIDI guitars.

I don't think real pianos are tuned precisely like that, and the use of a dominant key may have been about historical trade-offs in tuning between different keys, but that's mostly a guess.

There's also the ergonomic aspects of key size and hand width.

Transposing is effortless on most modern keyboard instruments: you press the transpose button. Now you have a choice of what key it sounds in and a choice of what fingering you find convenient.

Isn't that better than your suggestion, where you're locked into one fingering?

Unless you have good pitch perception in which case transpose buttons mess you up.

You may be aware, but what you are describing depends on temperment[1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament

Be sure to check out the "See Also" section if interested.

The Janko layout does this and has been around since the 1800s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_keyboard

I have one, in the form of a Chromatone keyboard (https://chromatone.jp/chromatone/index.html, no longer available). The uniformity does make it harder to play by touch, but it otherwise has a lot of advantages. I have been experimenting with different colours and tactile markers (little rubber feet intended to stick on the bottom of things) but I haven't settled on anything yet.

I have commented on this a few times before: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Others have too, and jacquesm has even built a Janko keyboard retrofit.

This is really interesting, thank you for sharing! I wonder if it would have been more successful if it had just two rows instead. The duplicate rows add more power, but at the cost of adding ambiguity when sightreading, as you have to impromptu figure out what fingering you want to use. And it also makes it more expensive and intimidating looking. I feel like two rows would provide the core benefits while being more accessible. But I could be totally off, as I've never touched this thing.

The more compact nature of the layout means you pretty much need more than 2 rows, or fingering some things seems to become very difficult. It feels like your fingers get tangled more easily if you stick to two rows (which you do at first, out of habit). I don't think it adds much to the cost (the different places to play the same note are all on the same physical lever), but it certainly makes it look intimidating, and the "playing by touch" issue is unsolved AFAIK.

I think the physical size of pianos is why the first decent design "won"; you don't take your own piano to where you're playing, you play whatever's there. In the electronic age there's a chance for Janko to take off, as that's not universally true any more, but I'm not holding my breath.

Pianist here. I see where you're coming from, but I definitely do also rely on the different shapes of keys to know where I am without looking. I've been learning to play the button end of an accordion and personally I find the uniformity makes it harder. But maybe that's just what I'm used to.

As an aside, I find c major a horrible key to play in, again I think the uniformity makes it harder and less ergonomic, but the same thing makes it easier to teach to beginners hence why everyone starts there.

Absolutely.

Another data point: I play the organ, which involves playing a large keyboard with your feet (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_keyboard). The structure of black notes is crucial to being able to play without looking (which is important because you’re simultaneously doing various other things). Concretely, I couldn’t imagine playing the organ without being able to slam my foot into the right hand side of a B flat in order to know that my foot is on top of the B. If you watch an experienced organist’s feet you’ll see them do this all the time.

I also find C major horrible.

This is pretty eye opening to me, I would have never thought anyone found C major more difficult to play in than other keys. To me, difficulty is directly proportional to the amount of stuff in the key signature, but that may be because I've never had proper education (~5 years of lessons as a child from a very casual teacher).

The way we happen to notate music doesn't help to endear people to f sharp major, certainly! If you keep practising all the scales and try to learn to do more by ear/improvise, I'm pretty sure you'll end up enjoying other keys more.

Aside from the Janko keyboard, there are instruments with the ‘harmonic table’ layout—a honeycomb of hexagonal keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_table_note_layout

The general principle is called ‘isomorphic keyboard’: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard

Building off of this to talk about functional harmony (I recommend a book called modeology)

Look up roman numeral notation for this next bit.

A V-I is called a perfect cadence in the major scale, and pretty much any other mode in which those chords naturally occur. The most important tones are the major 7th, which is one semitone away from the root and has a strong desire to resolve up, and the perfect 5th, which is a very stable sound that wants to fall up a fourth or down a fifth to the root. As such, the third can be major, minor, omitted, or replaced and the function of the chord remains pretty much unchanged. This is called modal interchange, since we are borrowing from a different mode for the root, in this case any mode other than Ionian (major). Mode changes the strong and weak cadences, however, so be mindful your alteration doesn't make a progression fall apart.

My favorite is ii7, iio7, and Imaj7. Another topic thats fun is tritone substitution, but that would make this a borderline blog post.

o in this context is a diminished chord, which also means that 7 is double flat (bb) because theory.

It can get crazier, there's tons of YouTube videos that explain it better. But

Can you suggest some YouTube videos you have liked on this subject?

> Most popular songs are composed by using mostly the same repeating chord patterns

https://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ

Way too many to list.

Great explanation given the text restrictions, - stepping away from the white notes, 7th chords are 135b7...as opposed to M7.

My favorite way to confound beginners -

1 3 5 - five (fifth) 1 3 - three (third) 3 5 - three (third) Therefore 3 + 3 = 5.

Once they get that, the rest is easy, especially explaining b13 notes etc.

> One step further, is learning different chord fingerings

By the way, pianists use the term "fingerings" for which finger is placed on which key. For example your C-E-G chord which you wrote with 1-3-5, the standard way of playing this as a beginner is the 1-3-5 fingers (1 being the thumb etc). More advanced players often play it with the 1-2-4 fingers. That lets you quickly change to the C-F-A chord with 1-3-5 fingering, which is essentially the F-A-C chord. By moving the hand one key to the right, you get D-G-B with 1-3-5 fingering, and voila, you got your first chord progression:

C-E-G (1-2-4 fingering) C-F-A (1-3-5 fingering) D-G-B (1-3-5 fingering) C-E-G (1-2-4 fingering)

Etc etc.

> correlated by how "willing" the notes are to resolve to the mode root (the first key of 7 you hit).

I've heard this explanation many times before, and I still don't understand how notes can be "willing" to do anything, or how a note can "resolve" to the root. Can someone ELI5?

It's theory, not law, and is in large part cultural and contextual. Basically, the motifs that we are familiar with have a certain notion of consonance and dissonance...consonance being notes that sound 'nice' together (due in part to overlapping harmonics reinforcing the sound), and dissonance being notes that sound a little 'off' or 'tense' (harmonics that don't overlap, so you get a 'beating' effect as the harmonics go in and out of phase).

Note 'resolution' is basically going from dissonance to consonance, providing a pleasing sense of stability.

What is considered consonant and dissonant can change with time and culture, so it's not a completely solid relationship, but overall a general pattern (like the notion of 'Major' being happy and 'minor' being sad is not a universal association).

If you play an F# then a C, does there not seem to be a "relationship" between the notes, that is different from if you play G then C? I think for most people it intuitively makes sense when they hear the notes. To me it sounds like F#->C is "awkward" whereas G->C is more "satisfying". Not sure if the explanation is in culture, neurology or physics or what, but to me an "emotional" relationship between the notes seem apparent on listening.

The willingness attributed to the notes is really about the expectations we have as listeners. For reasons that are some combination of acoustics, our auditory system, and cultural norms, we perceive some sequences of notes as creating tension, and others as resolving that tension.

When you hear a musical line that resolves, it sounds finished. When you hear one that doesn't resolve, it sounds like there's another note that needs to be played to finish it.

Different people emphasize different ones of these factors in their theory of how this works, but one thing we can mostly agree on is that different arrangements of notes played together or in sequence convey different moods or emotions in a way that is fairly predictable, at least within a given cultural context. So composers can intentionally write happy or sad or suspenseful songs or whatever using music theory.

The musical modes can be thought of as a single pattern of note intervals across an octave, but starting on different notes in the sequence. The standard way to lay out the modes is to start with a scale that is called the Ionian mode, the diatonic scale, or the Major scale.

These names all refer to the same pattern of intervals. Counting semitones, this pattern is 2-2-1-2-2-2-1.

(The "2" means two keys on a piano, or two frets on a guitar, for example.)

If you play that pattern, you will hear the familiar major scale in the key that is named by the first note you play. If you start on C, it's C Major.

The other modes are the same pattern, but starting on different notes. If we continue to use the notes of the C Major scale, leaving the pattern where it is, then starting on D instead of C gives us the Dorian mode (in the key of D). Its pattern is 2-1-2-2-2-1-2 -- in other words, exactly the same set of intervals as the Ionian mode, but shifted by one.

If you keep moving the starting note up by one, you get each of the other modes: Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.

Each mode has its own mood or emotional character. The Aeolian mode, for example, is the same sequence of intervals as the Natural Minor scale, and tends to sound melancholy or wistful.

A simple trick for hearing what a mode sounds like is to sit down at a piano, find the first note of the mode you're interested in, and play the first note against each of the other notes in sequence up and down the scale. It's easiest to do if you start with the Ionian mode in C, because it's simply all the white keys on the piano, starting with C and going up to the right. So, to hear what the Ionian sounds like, play C, then C and the white note immediately to the right of it at the same time, then the next white note, then the next, all the way up to the next C (and,optionally, back down again).

If you repeat this exercise, but start on D instead of C, you'll hear that the scale has a different character. Keep going, and you get a nice sense of what each mode sounds like. Dorian's cheerful; Aeolian's melancholy; Phrygian's a little exotic; Locrian is just weird and never seems to resolve.

Since the notes are just frequencies of sound waves, it makes sense to me that some frequencies sound better together and some frequencies don't quite sound resolved when played together.

One way I remember is a Major scale is 2 Tetrachords separated by a semitone

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