It has always annoyed me the inexplicable layout of White and Black keys on music keyboards.
I decided to investigate – musicians blissfully inform that it is based on science but I am convinced that the person who designed the keyboard was no scientist but rather an elitist that wanted to keep the science behind the keyboard hidden to all but the most determined and intelligent in order to permanently exclude those of us who maintain that it cannot be the best way to organise things.
It is similar in the German language and its overly complex construction of the definite article, another of life’s arguments that ensured that I would never learn German, there is really no need for 16 variants in any language.
Back to the keyboard so it turns out you can mathematically derive the key frequencies once we divide each Octave (why bloody eight) into the 12 equally spaced tones that make up each Octave. Jars with me this – why Octave why not Duodecim – bastards.
Anyway here it is a picture of a keyboard with all the lovely numbers that live behind it.
The question is whether this perversely organised layout is defensible – turns out it is not!
There are at least 2 alternatives that are more intuative and easier to work with learn and understand.
The first is the Janko keyboard see details from Wiki here. Guess what designed by an Engineer!
The second is the less elegant but more engineering and workman like Bilinear Uniform Chromatic Keyboard (BUCK) now this is more like it no mysterious gaps no weird arguments.
How can anyone argue that 4 scales rather than 24 is a better way to go, in these woke days it might also help that you have the same number of white notes as black – equality of a sort?
bradyclan 