Racist Pianos

Well, my vain and half-hearted attempts to understand all things (proper-) musical continue. My apologies to all those who know so much better, they don’t know where to start with my ignorant and irritating questions!

I had always assumed that the poor little black keys pushed away at the back of the piano were in some way less important or significant than the big white ones at the front. I imagined that one could always bang out a melody on the white keys and the black ones were just for adding frills, or something. But it turns out it is not so.

I think I had gathered that the black keys are flats and sharps which implied to me that they were deviations from “proper” notes. But it turns out all this is merely conventional.

To my beloved all this seems the obvious natural order of things, works perfectly well and should be accepted with gladness. But it seems to me that the field is wide open for piano keyboard re-design.

There are certainly other possible sensible arrangements of white and black keys. Indeed, you don’t really need a distinction at all, do you?

There is no reason, for example, why one couldn’t have a black note between each white note. This would give scope for more versatility. It might be harder to play in some ways (you wouldn’t want your keyboard too wide to reach good ranges of notes), but you muso. guys love a challenge: just look at the stops, pedals and keyboards on different levels on a big old organ. Isn’t that just showing off?

Another potential difficulty might be that the conventional pattern of white and black notes is used to easily identify particular notes and octaves: it lets you spot middle C straight off. But come on, there are ways around this: why not paint middle C red and all other Cs green. Simple. And a more fun keyboard. Even better, why not label the keys too? You’re going to tell me that a beautiful Steinway with the alphabet spilt over it would be ugly, aren’t you?

I trust my musical readers will feel free to correct any errors of fact above and make alternative suggestions of taste. “Shut up, Lloydie! what do you know? Pianos are lovely as they are. Maybe you should learn to play chop-sticks before calling for the overturning of the Western Musical Tradition”, and so on, shall be taken as read, if you don’t mind.