1/12/2024 0 Comments Piano key layout![]() ![]() The Piano Keys in Octavesīy the time these black and white keys had migrated from the pipe organ to the harpsichord and finally to the 18th century invention called a piano, the keyboard had grown not only from seven scale tones to 12, but also multiplied into octaves and sections. Over time, the tuning of these keys were mathematically refined into what is called an “equal-tempered scale”-allowing musicians to play accurate major and minor scales starting on any of the 12 notes. Since the original seven white keys created natural major and minor scales consisting of two half-steps and five whole steps, the new black keys were slipped in between the whole steps to make 12 equal half-steps. The oldest documented keyboard that used the seven-plus-five keyboard is the German Halberstadt organ of 1361. But on some early organs and harpsichords, the colors were reversed. On the modern piano, these are called “sharps” and “flats” and colored black. In the 14th century, five new keys were added to the original seven, creating what is called a chromatic scale. But as other cultures and new ideas expanded the complexity of music beyond simple folk music and Gregorian chants, musicians needed more than a diatonic scale. The sound of the hydraulis made it a very popular instrument throughout the first five centuries A.D. These notes were all the ancient Greeks needed because their tones create natural diatonic scales: a major scale when starting on C and a minor scale when starting on A-still the two most commonly used scales in western music. The seven white piano keys named A, B, C, D, E, F, G reflect the seven basic notes of the hydraulis. In ancient Greece, the first musical keyboard device was called a hydraulis-meaning “water organ.” This instrument used the power of water to blow air through the pipes of a pan flute. So to find the origin of piano keys we must trace the evolution of a pipe organ all the way back to the third century B.C.E. The piano keyboard descended from the harpsichord, which descended from a combination of a stringed harp and the keys of a pipe organ. When we see piano keys we tend to think of a piano, but pianos are a relatively young invention. Which keys are white and which black has reversed over time.Representation of the hydraulis (second from left) and other instruments in the Zliten mosaic from ancient Rome. (In medieval liturgical chants and music, some of the ratios are missing.) If you move up a keyboard by 5ths for 7 octaves (seven keys from where you start for each fifth), you will find you have landed on the 12 semitones into which every octave is divided and that is the source of the division of the octave into 12 parts. I suspect a great choral group can sound very pure because the singers can perform nearly perfect tempering.Īs for your question about the 12 keys, these are called semitones and are based on pleasing ratios found in Western music, fifths, thirds, sevenths, and octaves. Occasionally pianos are tempered with old tunings to play period music. Modern 20th century tempering changes each tone a little bit. See and the work of the monk Mersene on vibrating strings and proof that the octave is a doubling of frequency. There have been many temperings tried over the ages, probably starting with harps. You have to "temper" the tuning by cheating a little to spread out the bad news. If you use 12 "perfect 5ths" of ratio 3:2, it will almost equal 7 octaves. The problem arises when you try to make octaves and 5ths work together. On a keyboard an example is from C to G - the 5 white and 3 black you noticed. Octaves sound good and so do "5ths", ratios of frequency of 3:2. The tuning problem has to do with what sounds good to the ear. ![]() There is plenty of physics behind the modern piano, particularly in the different tunings and where a hammer should strike the string. In practice, a piano tuner may "stretch" some notes. Today, frequencies are in theory equally spaced on a logarithmic scale. well tuned) Clavier, a set of 24 short pieces in all 24 keys, to show the advantages of his preferred tuning. Tuning was a controversial question among musician in the time of J. But the piano can be played in any key equally well. Equally spaced frequencies do not produce perfect chords. This makes it difficult to tune a piano satisfactorily. A slightly different ratio produces beats. If two frequencies have a ratio of 2:1, they are an octave apart. The physiology/physics is that pleasing chords are produced by frequencies that can be expressed as the ratios of small numbers. For example, Arabic music has 5 notes per octave. 12 notes per octave comes from the history of Western music. ![]()
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