Learning to play a piano in any key is like learning 12 instruments. With an ebony after each ivory, your span would be increased by a whole tone and it would be like learning only 2 instruments.
-- tonybe, Dec 04 2009

Why are there 12 tones in an octave? http://www.skytopia.../project/scale.html
Good starting place. [csea, Dec 05 2009]

Musimathics http://www.musimathics.com/
Also a good read [csea, Dec 05 2009]

6/6 cross strung harp http://www.michigan...2967893/7394042.htm
Well baked in harp form, fairly widely used in the USA, has acknowledged advantages and disadvantages over the traditional 5/7 setup. [pocmloc, Dec 05 2009]

'twould be awkward to adjust to.
-- DrWorm, Dec 05 2009


[tonybe], could you elaborate? (Your whole thesis is one paragraph.)

So, six white keys, and six black keys per octave? I trust you do understand the ancient Greek notion of Phi (The Golden Ratio)? That would leave 16 as the number of tones between octaves without it, and: one HUGE panano.
-- Wily Peyote, Dec 05 2009


No, Mr. Peyote, there would still be 12 notes per octave.
-- tonybe, Dec 05 2009


Worth the price of admission: csea's links. Thank you.
-- Wily Peyote, Dec 05 2009


As someone who is learning the paino, this seems reasonable (and has probably been proposed many times before). It would make the keyboard much easier to transpose (as pointed out) and, incidentally, would make it smaller (since the two "gaps" between B and C, and between E and F, would be occupied by a black key).

It would be less good for fairly simple music, which tends to focus on the white notes only, with the blacks used for the occasional accent; it would be very difficult to write a piece for the white notes only, though perhaps this wouldn't matter.

On the other hand, there are so many absurdities in musical instruments and musical notation that one really doesn't know how to begin. I mean, have you seen how people *write* the stuff?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 05 2009


Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do...

Sound familier... These are the white keys on the keyboard (in the key of C).

I see your argument tonybe... you would only have to learn the scale twice (black key "Do" or white key "Do"). But I like to have a built in major scale, even if it only works for one key.
-- knowtion, Dec 06 2009


There would be the practical difficulty of locating a particular note on this uniform sequence of white and black keys. Perhaps this could be solved by colouring every seventh 'white' key?
-- Mickey the Fish, Feb 04 2010


And incidentally, has anyone noticed this strange congruence?

Map the months of the year on to the piano keyboard (the old-fashioned, soon to be obsolete variety, that is) in ascending sequence, such that January maps to F.

Now observe: all the months with 31 days fall on white notes, and all the others on black. How odd.
-- Mickey the Fish, Feb 04 2010



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