So get a load of this. I wanted to do some simple playing along to my favorite Oasis and Tears for Fears songs. Play what? Well, I tried guitar classes, but man is guitar hard. So how about a musical keyboard?
I had actually taken a basic piano class across the street from Harvey Mudd at Scripps College (where the girls were), and was indignant to learn how the conventional piano’s “seven-five” (seven white keys, five black keys) layout meant that a C-major chord, while embodying the exact same sequence of half-steps between notes as a B-major chord, for instance, ended up looking very different. Bullcrap!
The sequence of four, and then three, half-steps between the notes in a major chord is an easy concept to learn and understand, but that doesn't mean that all major chords look remotely the same!
The same goes for scales. Playing a C-major scale is easy, but an A-major scale is more complicated, even though the sequence of half-steps is exactly the dingdang same:
Same thing with scales. Even though all major scales are the same series of half-steps, they look very different. Learn one learn them all? Nope!
So how about this. How about a “six-six” keyboard, with six white keys and six black keys per octave? That way, the geometric patterns (and the shape necessarily made by one’s hand) between keys that correspond to half-step interval patterns will be consistent, regardless of where you’re starting from:
Aha, now that's more like it. The same half-step pattern corresponds to the same geometrical pattern between keys, wherever you start from!
Now we’re talking.
What’s weird now is that the “white” keys are no longer always the “natural” (as opposed to “flat” and “sharp”) keys. The C, D and E keys look the same as before, but F, G, A and B are black keys now.
It’s all the same notes, though. All the same notes.
Bingo! I took the brain of a cheap Midiman MIDI controller and figured out how to re-wire it to a new set of key switches. (Now in a storage room at Cornish College of the Arts).
So I got a cheap Midiman keyboard and figured out to wire its brains to a new set of Cherry keyboard keys. I water-jet cut the “white keys” from a sheet of fiberglass panel and glued the black keys down.
In triumph, I sat on the floor in my underwear for an entire Saturday and played along to my favorite songs with the help of some guitar tabs from the internet. The regular geometric pattern of the keys meant that most of the time, when I intuitively reached out and played a chord, I actually got it right, like I’m Elton John! Victory lap!
Longshot City 