Pianos (keys) are badly designed!

PASHKULI · 2025-01-10T22:16:32+00:00

Hello, PianoTell members and readers! TL; DR (please scroll down for the links to my 'Google Drive' repository and my YouTube channel) I design pianos (...

PASHKULI

MRC Who said anything about an instrument with more than 200 notes?

Ok, so how many notes an intstrument tuned to "perfect" ratios will have?
Can you name the perfect ratios (how many and which exact ratios) and tune the physical instrument that way?
You can't. Because it is not physically possible. At most, you will end up with lots of enharmonic sequences (microtonal notes) which have to be ordered somehow in order to be playable by human hands\fingers… and\or feet.
Non-modal (modern) music sounds terrible in Just intonation. It is not possible. It is not intended for it. Only for simple modal music with root note and maybe a few more notes as song\voicing and that is it (Medieval church chants).

The inherited drawback of the curent "standard" music notation is that it refers to modal order of notes – hence the usual key signatures are placed next to the clef – and you need them in order to recognise the notes (all as ovals) on the staff lines (and ledger lines). Maybe worked ok up untill the 14 to 15 century. And most certainly did not work for common folk music but the church chants and the such educated musicians – usually bound to the Church.

"Johann Sebastian Bach studied music at St. Michael's School in Lüneburg (in Germany).
St. Michaelis is one of the main church schools in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. It was first an abbey church of the former monastery of Benedictines who repurposed it as a school in the 11th century.
Bach was a chorister at St Michael's School in Lüneburg and a pupil of Georg Böhm. He then attended classes with teacher Johann Adam Reincken in Hamburg where studied the church organ."

Quite similar to Vivaldi in Italy (who is seven years older than Bach) when at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a catholic church priest as a pupil to the maestro di cappella at St Mark's Basilica (local church institution in Venice) and at the age of 24 began to teach Music at Ospedale della Pietà and its boys choir.

Both musicians though wrote musical pieces which were more suitable for a chromatic music than strictly diatonic.
Otherwise Bach would have never wrote the "Well tempered klavier\keyboard" which used intonation similar to the then quite modern invention of 12TET but not exatly as we use it today because they did not have modern state om the art in sound recording and producing of exact pitches.

Maybe this is more like it (but how they tuned ratios in Bach's time before 12TET is not really known):

MRC

Well, those three examples are ghastly. They have nothing to do with the beautiful intonation that a fine baroque group or a top barbershop quartet can produce.

I think we've gone far enough down the rabbit-hole of pure intonation. I'd just like, once again, to stress this: you don't have to delve into different temperaments to appreciate why the current notation is so well-adapted to conveying the essence of tonal music.

Let's take the example I posted above. I'll post it again for convenience:

The key signature immediately tells me that:

the piece is tonal.
the tonality is either A major or F# minor; glancing at the first bar I see it's F# minor.

Knowing the key of the piece already gives me important information. I know that, as long as no accidentals appear, I will be limited to the 7 notes of the natural F# minor scale. This makes life easier: I'm only dealing with 7 notes instead of 12.

But that's not all: I have the information that F# minor is the home key. As I read the first few bars, I see the harmonies in relation to this key. Before I even play the music, I hear it in my head and I understand it. I immediately see the first turning point, when an accidental appears in bar 6 to create an F#9 chord.

The notation isn't just telling me which notes to play when, it's giving me information about the harmonic structure of the piece and the composer's concept. Other notation systems may do a reasonable job of telling me which keys to press at what time, but none of the ones I have encountered manage to combine this with imparting all the harmonic information that is part of the piece.

PASHKULI

MRC
You have learnt how to read it. Do not forget about that. Ever. Remember the hours, days, weeks.
Also it starts in Ne³ (what you call F♯ min) but later at bar 7 it becomes Ne⁴˙¹⁰ (what you would call F♯ maj but it is actually 'dominant' chord… which is the ⁴˙¹⁰ in how I will write it between the bars to show a tonality change… because it is quite characteristic in the sounding of the piece).

Ok, it is going pretty good as I started transcribing it… but I need your help to tell me what is going on here:

here is how it is on the MIDI, yet, as I watched real pianist play it (on Youtube) it was difficult to see which fingers press that as it is quite fast and hands overlap more or less.

• this MIDI roll also gives you the legend for the mapping of the noteheads (symbols)

So, what does it mean this 'doubled' note? Some of the same 'doubling' appear later as well. How is it possible to play the same note or is it with two different fingers at the same time – but that would be redundant on a piano. I do not get it! So, I placed the ¹/₃₂ pauses there (in my notation) as it looks more logical (to me at least) for the voices in line.

Please, note that if you do not want (to use) the noteheads you can always write just the noteletters for each note instead – especially when hand writing it – is much more convenient like writing words (but only with consonants).
Here is the map of all symbols with the rests:

At a glance, on PMN (Plain Music Notation) system I can see the renovas ("octaves") in the piece and how simple it is actually in terms of notes variety. I do not get distracted by busy lines and accidentals. I just can see how it is, without any need to remember key signature in order to know which notes on the score are actually 'altered'.

Also, and I think it is plainly (pun!) obvious, in the Plain system I can change the clef note for the other hand yet the notes will have the same meaning, where on the "standard" score their meaning\pitch will change (so called F clef or movable treble C clef). So…

MRC

PASHKULI You have learnt how to read it. Do not forget about that. Ever. Remember the hours, days, weeks.

Yes, of course I have learnt to read it! That's the normal thing to do if you want to understand a language. And it's normal that learning a language takes time.

Let's say you move to a country where the language is totally unfamiliar to you. Do you:

Do your best to learn the language as well as possible, so you can speak it, read it, and write it, up to a point where you have a deep understanding of the way the language works and are capable of appreciating the literature written in it.

or:

Learn it superficially without fully understanding it, tell the people of the country where you are now living that their written language is the result of "1000 years of… indoctrination" and "a work of ignorance", and that you have created a simpler one.

You pose this question:

PASHKULI So, what does it mean this 'doubled' note? Some of the same 'doubling' appear later as well. How is it possible to play the same note or is it with two different fingers at the same time – but that would be redundant on a piano. I do not get it!

That makes it clear that you do not understand a very basic feature of voice writing in standard musical notation. Before you try to create a new notation system, you might begin by learning the current one correctly.

MRC

PASHKULI This is very well known as the stems sort of separate the voices – usually up to 4 – two for each stave.

Strange, just a few posts ago, confronted with an example of such voice writing, you wrote:

PASHKULI . How is it possible to play the same note or is it with two different fingers at the same time – but that would be redundant on a piano. I do not get it!

I took the trouble to explain it to you, and now you claim it's "very well known". Yes, indeed it is well known, but before I posted my explanation, you clearly didn't know what was going on.

PASHKULI

MRC

I want to learn from you and your understanding on the question I asked with regards to those overlaps in the voicing or if on piano – the finger config. In other words – I am asking you to help me understand it or to teach me.
If you do not want to do that, well why asked me in a first place to transcribe it.
I am mostly sure this piece is intended for piano but it also could be purposed for a quartet. I can only guess.

To answer to your questions:
I have studied Spanish and English years before I moved and lived in such speaking countries to the point where I see the problems in those languages.
But here is something even more outrageous – I have written a whole treatise on the quite frankly plainly visible mistakes inherited in my own native language and its alphabet (how it was misunderstood by the "reforms" in the last 200 years) as it uses the Cyrillic alphabet created yet again by my own people 1200+ years ago where they used old runics combined with the Coptic (north Egypt, egyptian christians) alphabet.

So, I hope you now understand where I am coming from (not the country, it is an figure of speech).

MRC

PASHKULI I am mostly sure this piece is intended for piano but it also could be purposed for a quartet. I can only guess.

It is indeed a piano piece, but the notation here shows more than just what notes to play when: it shows the underlying voice writing. It just happens that two voices converge on the same note. There is no special technique for playing this note, it's just important to know that it belongs to both voices.

This sort of voice writing is common in keyboard music, specially in pieces such as fugues where several voices may converge and cross. We pianists use the information this communicates in deciding how to interpret the music. Often it will help to imagine an orchestra or a choir.

Here are a few bars from the 24th fugue in the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier:

In bar 12, voices 2, 3 and 4 are playing. The first voice enters in bar 13, and at the end of this bar the second voice coincides with the first. At the beginning of bar 14 the two voices cross over. You can see which notes belong to which voice in these two bars by looking at the tails: the tails of the first voice go upwards and the tails of the second voice go downwards.

A notation system needs to reflect faithfully the wishes of the composer, so there needs to be a way of showing voices that may converge on one note, or cross over.

PASHKULI I have studied Spanish and English years before I moved and lived in such speaking countries to the point where I see the problems in those languages

Maybe you concentrate too much on what you consider to be problems? I know English, French and German intimately and take great delight in the subtleties of each language. Since most of my work has been in opera theatres, I have had the pleasure of working with wonderful language coaches who all adore their respective languages and have helped singers of various nationalities sing in Italian, Russian, Czech and Hungarian.

All these languages have their quirks, but I don't see them as problems. I relish them: they add spice. Sometimes a word or a phrase intrigues me and I will research its origins, maybe finding out that it comes from a misunderstanding or mispronunciation of a foreign word. Sometimes something strikes me as particularly illogical, and I will try to find out if there was as some point a logic to it that has been lost.

The idiosyncrasies are bound up with the history of each language. This history may have dark sides, there may be racism and oppression involved, and there are certainly cases where it is good to think of using different words or phrases, but most of the time this isn't necessary. Languages are rich, multi-faceted, fascinating things that have been shaped over centuries, and for me a constant source of wonder.

PASHKULI

MRC In bar 12, voices 2, 3 and 4 are playing. The first voice enters in bar 13, and at the end of this bar the second voice coincides with the first.

This is very well known as the stems sort of separate the voices – usually up to 4 – two for each stave.
I have an example of that in PMN. It was just confusing with so many symbols to keep track. If they are intended for different imstruments they shal be kept separate. My PMN notation allows for that. The standart notation would take up too much staves if voices have to be separated in such cases – overlaps of notes. It can also be seen in bar 14 and you have to admit (I know you won't) quite frankly that it looks… cumbersome especially with all those "accidental" symbols next to each other. But again those overlaps are exeptions (or maybe not). But the higher notes could have gone on v1 (top voice). A bit redundent on Bach's behalf to intertwine them as such, more over they share same duration (¹/₈).

Which reminds me that… because in my PMN the ¹/₈ notes do not have tails\stems, it will be intersting to see how the voices will come out and get separated. I will try this as well. Ravel's example is not that interesting anymore.

Thank you for the clarifications indeed.
My background is not bound (in Music as well) to the Church though. Quite the opposite. I prefer the millenia old tradition of folklore (you may call it 'common folk' or ethnic music).
With the PMN when you write on a row you immediatelly have two more renovas ("octaves") belonging to the row above and row below to the row you write in. You can choose any clef (they also serve as 'renova separators') to represent tonality\modal change… even for every bar if it is significant.

On the standard notation a change in the clef changes all the notes and they now have to be accounted for a change.
Anyway, it has been here for more than 600 years now. People can not even think that there might be (a better) alternative. The 'geocentric' system is has too much and very deep roots.

PASHKULI

MRC
Brother, found other examples whilst searcihng for sources on the same bars and lo and behold:

So, there is… actually I could not find the original manuscript from Bach but regardless…
It is a mess. Hearing the piece… really nothing but it is more of an exercise than having any musical value.

PASHKULI

MRC
I was refering to the piano (fingers) to play different voices, so if two voices share the same note on the grand staff, logically that would imply presssing the same key on a piano with two different fingers – which would be redundant on a piano – as piano has one key per note, contrary to let's say a guitar, where a technique called 'tapping' can be used to tap the same note but on a adjacent string.
Nevermind. The piece (by Ravel) was supposedly written for the piano. That is why I asked.

MRC

PASHKULI I was refering to the piano (fingers) to play different voices, so if two voices share the same note on the grand staff, logically that would imply presssing the same key on a piano with two different fingers

No, the logical implication is not that the same key should be played with two different fingers. All this notation says is that the two voices converge on the same note, it says nothing about which fingers should play which note.

This notation of two voices converging on the same note is standard in piano music, nothing unusual. It's extremely common In the works of the most played romantic composers: you don't have to look far to find a host of examples in pieces by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt or Brahms.

I've already said this, but I'll stress it again:

If you want to create a better notation system, first you need to fully understand the existing one.

You need to understand what the notation is conveying. It's conveying meaning, not just which note to play when.

PASHKULI

MRC I've already said this, but I'll stress it again:

If you want to create a better notation system, first you need to fully understand the existing one.

You need to understand what the notation is conveying. It's conveying meaning, not just which note to play when.

Trust me, I understand it very, very well because I know how it came to be. Such overlaps are typical redundency… at least for the piano.
Because my next question is: what happens if such overlap happens on a note where both voices share it but with different duration? Can we see examples of that? It should again be reflectid on the stems' direction and flags\beams.
But that "same note" overlap can happen in such way (the so called 'middle C' for example and the surrounding notes) where it can be written on both staves (for voices 2 and 3).

P.S. At the moment I am writting articles for 'Piano Journal' (UK, part of EPTA Europe) but will get back to the translations soon, I hope.

MRC

PASHKULI Trust me, I understand it very, very well because I know how it came to be. Such overlaps are typical redundency… at least for the piano.

You may think you understand, but you don't. There is no redundancy.

PASHKULI Because my next question is: what happens if such overlap happens on a note where both voices share it but with different duration? Can we see examples of that?

You can easily find examples of that if you care to look.

PASHKULI

MRC
It is too ambiguous as the whole Music notation system, because it came from a 'special case' and chain of predelecitons.
I dare to say it was also due to trivial ignorance or inability to understand.

MRC

PASHKULI I dare to say it was also due to trivial ignorance or inability to understand.

You are referring to yourself there?

Tantacrul, in the video I posted earlier in this thread, divides the critics of the current notation system into three groups:

the 'Reformers', a small group of highly informed and imaginative people who have proposed alternative notation systems of their own, some which challenge Western notation in really compelling ways, the 'C-Reformers', a much larger group of reasonably informed musicians who exhibit a deep knowledge in one area, but who are blind to many others, and the 'Disruptors', a group of highly uninformed people, often with expertise in a different field (usually technology), who mistake their ignorance for a kind of fresh-eyed clarity, misrecognising the gaps in their understanding as actual gaps in notation itself.

Your remarks in this thread show clearly that you belong to that last group.

PASHKULI

MRC
If you say so, and if Tantaricul says those are (his personal) categorisations, so be it.

Here are mine:

• to understand what been told to learn an intelligent person should ask questions first! Not blindly to accept what has been told to do. As Steve Jobs said "Everything around you has been made by people who were not any smarter than you." (and I do not even like him, but he is right in this)

• the more intelligent a person is the less likely they could get manipulated by others

• if you know (at least interested in) the origin of things (this is more typical to people who are technical in mind) the better the chance to come up with new ideas, even completely new ones (plenty of examples in History of Science, Art, Crafts); a change does not necessarily mean better – but that is how current Music notation came to be – it changed a very old one by introducing 'special cases' and that is all there is to say about it really!

• to learn something does not equate to have been able to understand it! (in this group fall all "educated" and "highly versed\deeply invested" individuals, in any field of human interaction and creativity) – the best way to describe it would be by using the word 'indoctrination' (those people in modern times are known as 'followers' or 'apologetics' or even 'simps')
examples:
· being a good car driver does not also mean you understand how cars are made or how to rapair them
· just because you read much books does not also mean you understand what the written words convey, reveal

• when confronted by highly logical and systematic explanation the above people usually start usuing derogatory language and disparaging attitude towards the opponent in the discussion – thus turning the discussion into passive aggressive exchange of words completely irrelevant to the subject of discussion

Just because something has been around for hundreds of years does not make it the only one there is.

MRC

PASHKULI just because you read much books does not also mean you understand what the written words convey, reveal

Precisely. The same thing applies to reading music: musical notation is not just an indication of what to play, it conveys meaning. G and A double flat point to the same note on a piano, but they do not have the same meaning: there is no redundancy here.

PASHKULI

Speaking about "gaps" from that quotation you posted: "…misrecognising the gaps in their understanding as actual gaps in notation itself."
The current Music notation claims to represent the pitches\intervals between vertically. That is not correct as there are 'gaps' in that vertical sructure and it is sacrificing ≈42% of that vertical structre.
Put on top of that redundancies such as:

There is a vertical change, obviously, but there isn't.
Oh, but I do not understand it… or, no one who knows how to write using this system would ever write it like that.
Yes, I understand, he used the word "gaps" figurativelly, but I took it… more "technically", I guess.

But do you know what is worse…
People (musicians) who have learnt (invested time in lessons and excercises) how to navigate\use those redundancies, so they can call "disruptors" people such as myself and even 'Dunning-Kruger' (which again is a misunderstanding as the graph offered by Dunning and Kruger covers all examples of gaining competence – knowledge with understanding – some even call it wisdom).
The Music notation I propose has in fact being inspired by much, much older Music notation than the "church" one.
Of course the latter ("church" notation) has its obvious correlation to the "standard" piano keyboard (with redundancies) layout of keys as the church organs use such layout as well. No doubt about that, but yet again it shows it is a 'special case'.

PASHKULI

MRC
It is obvious you have not understood the "standard" music notation and its special case origin… and all the redundancy it carries with itself. You may have learned it (that redundancy) but refuse to see it as such. It is the exact definition of indoctrination.

rsl12

Both of you, please remember that there is only One Rule at Pianotell:

rsl12 Be nice to each other. Don't routinely make other people's experiences worse. Comments that contain personal attacks, hate speech, trolling, unnecessarily derogatory or inflammatory remarks are not welcome and will be removed.

PASHKULI

rsl12
I think we are all good.
It is normal for many musicians (by 'many' I mean those who have invested time as in education of the typical Music school tradition) to have not paid much attention or even have skipped the Music history class. Or rather, to have taken it for granted as it is, because quite frankly they teach only one side of the story – that of the church.
Most students have no idea that at one piont in time there were no "flats and sharps" and all notes were… natural though divided into genera (old word for tuning or rather – temperament).
Then at one point, due to misunderstanding, the two Bs ( ♮ and ♭ ) in the upper register ("octave") were both accidentals, yet they had the same key shape as the rest of the notes, at the time of 10th 11th century.
This has its explanation, because contrary to any expectation, the modes in use were what we call today 'G major' (the G = Г for Гαμμα = gamma) and by saying 'major' I mean both the Ionian and Mixolydian (also called Dominant). Then when naming the notes as another 'special case' to the letters used they followed the syllables Ut…, Re…, Mi…, Fe… from where comes the invented word gamut (gamma + ut) which is still in use today in English though primarily in completely different applications. In my country we use Gamma for music application because Greeks have been our neighbours (since millennia). Yet, this comes from the Church, not from the Greeks. They never used Г as a sort of name for a genera (tuning, mode, scale, temperament). The mekieval church monks did that.

Those same students do not understand why it was called Dominant either. They repeat the indoctrinated definition about "tension and release" but what 'tension' has to do with 'dominance' (to govern, command, power) is unclear when being asked to explain. They might go in the right direction by mentioning the natural appearence of harmonics, especially the overtones, from and of a single note but that is vaguely relevant to music harmony of the so called Tonic and Dominant. Then maybe the undertones for the importance of Subdominant (yet again that word 'dominant')… and it will end up in an awkward "erm… yeah, that's why!".

Imagine if a simple question is asked such as "Why A is where it is on a piano, and why A is not where C is… after all we call it "middle" C and it is the note between the two staves on the grand staff usually."

That's what the big Music theory books say and start with usually… basically indoctrinating the fresh minds.

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