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THE BILINEAR CHROMATIC KEYBOARD Due to the widespread popularity of keyboard instruments, the basic layout of the piano is usually accepted without question. For almost all other instruments however, many different tunings and arrangements are common: guitars, violins and other string instruments are often played in alternative tunings; similarly, the key mechanisms of wind instruments also appear in different configurations. All these systems result in the notes being placed in different arrangements on the instrument. However, while the concept of a linear chromatic keyboard has been acknowledged for decades, and can be found in a similar form on some accordions, no other arrangements are available for piano-like keyboard instruments. The Traditional Layout The white keys of the traditional instrument derive from the earliest keyboards, which were diatonic with just seven notes per octave. It was only later that the black keys were inserted in-between these white keys, giving the familiar pattern we see today[1][1]. Xylophones (and related instruments) took their arrangement from the traditional keyboard layout, which produces twelve different patterns for each and every scale, chord, arpeggio, melody and harmony. The major scale alone generates the following twelve possibilities:
Because of the sheer amount of practice required to learn all these different patterns fluently, many keyboard players have a restricted knowledge of chords, scales, and chord-progressions; countless others give up the instrument as a hobby before progressing past the basics (often turning to the guitar where scales and chords are moveable). Again, while many string players use different tunings that alter the position of notes on the fingerboard, the only available 'keyboard' instruments with alternative layouts employ accordion-like buttons:
However, there are currently no piano-like keyboard instruments available with alternative layouts. The best solution would
be to arrange the keys linearly, like so: |
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In other words, we can learn a melody from one key, and be able to play it from any key on the same row in exactly the same way. Furthermore, the major scale pattern from the black-key notes is merely an inversion of the white-key major scale pattern. Therefore, transposing a melody from a white-key tonic to a black-key tonic is simply a matter of swapping the sequences of black keys to white keys and vice-versa.
The problem with this design is that it presents problems with regard to identifying which notes correspond to which keys, so it is difficult to orientate oneself on the instrument. The solution is to make the sharp and flat keys black (or otherwise coloured differently than notes corresponding to C major). This modification not only enables the performer to recognise notes instantly, but also makes this chromatic arrangement more familiar to traditional keyboard players and much more acceptable to musicians in general:
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