Piano Playing

Keyboard Instruments

A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument which is played using a musical keypad. It produces sounds by striking the steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound facilitating the continuation of vibrating sound at its resonant frequency. These vibrations then travel through the bridges to the sound board which serves as an amplifier. Thus keyboard is a generalized term of instruments that produce sound when the keys are depressed. Therefore, technically piano is a type of keyboard instrument.

Key arrangement

The keys in the conventional keyboard are arranged such that each C-major scale octave consists of seven white keys which sequentially produce the notes C, D, E, F, G, A and B. It consists of seven white long keys and five black sharp keys per octave, with the long keys making up the C-major scale. The white keys are of equal width and the five black keys produce the notes C', D', E', F', G', A' and B'. One end of the black keys terminates along a smooth continuous line and the corresponding ends of each white key have a portion extended equidistantly. If the width of the portion of the white keys generating sounds B, C, E and F is equal to the first value and the width of the portion of the white keys generating sounds D, G and A is equal to the second value; then the ratio of the first value to the second value is 3:4.

Keyboard as similar to piano

The similarities include the white keys that form the C-major scale, the width of the keys producing the notes B, C, E and F is one-fourth less than the width of the remaining keys that produce the notes D, G and A. The templates are separated into five adjacent divisions that are equally wide, each division being half the width of either of D, G or A key. This makes the three adjacent divisions as equal to two B, C, E or F keys. Further, two divisions are as wide as one D, G or A key and could be placed to represent all possible scales, thirds, triads and tetrads with their intervals and other features.

Piano Playing