MusicScienceGuy

Jammer vs piano - part 0: Contents

Curious about music-theory based musical instruments? This blog is for you. 

TypePad, does not have an automatic Table of Contents.  I have hand-created one

• 1.   Comparing Pianos to a new instrument, the jammer  
        Jammer vs piano
  
  
• 1B. What is a Jammer; highlights & discoveries overview
      Highlights & discoveries overview  
   
• 2. Somebody has to do it: my modest qualifications re musical instruments:
       No Qualifications, No Experience, Deep Interest
  
  

 

Jammer vs Piano - Part 8 - Identifying the key, tonal centre & scale (major/minor) on jammers

Jammer shortcuts - Identifying the key, the tonal centre (tonic) and scale

How do we read from the score where to put the hand, and what fingers we’ll generally be using on our jammers?

For a brief summary on the minor key system and the terms used, see The key, the tonal centre (tonic) and scale

The Standard Keyboard (a.k.a. the Piano keyboard) is built around a musical scale tuned to an irregularly spaced set of notes called the major scale. Traditional music notation (the score) is designed to match the major scale and the musician using this scale.

Alternative musical instruments, on the other hand, are built around music theory and consistent spacing of notes.  The two styles fight somewhat. 

Players of alternative musical instruments (including jammers) need to read a score's key signature (the number of sharps or flats) and extract:

1. The tonal centre of the music: this informs where the centre of the hand goes; the tonic of the music.
2. The scale used in the music: major or harmonic The scale informs the consistent melodic pattern the fingers use, the chords to create, the chord progressions and the bass line of the piece.

Fortunately, the jammer gives, by design, a way to accurately and quickly read the score and know the key and scale the piece uses.

Step 1: Assume the key is major, find the key.
First, read the number of sharps or flats then, on the jammer, working outward from the C, the centre line, which has zero flats, and the F and G, which have one flat and one sharp respectively. Count up two flats or sharps for every key away from the centre.

For example:

{Diagram here}

0 sharps/flats, the key is  C major
3  flats, the key is        Eb major
3 sharps, the key is        A major

The jammer player only need remember that the relative minor is a minor third lower than the relative major.
It is always the same relative vector on the keyboard, so you are given a choice or two positions to put the hand. In the case of zero flats, the middle finger goes over the C.

{Diagram here}

Step 2: Determining which hand position “fits the music”. 

The textbooks’ suggestions:

1. Look and the tonic triad at the beginning and end of the piece: do the notes 1, 3, and 5 which key signature matches?
2. What is the Final tone of the piece, particularly the lowest note of the final chord? Which is it?
3. Look at the second to last chord in the piece; this is usually the Is it a leading tone?; does it sharpen the 7^th?

My suggestion: play the first couple of bars and the last couple of bars of the piece.  First with the hands positioned for first the major and then the minor key. You should feel which option "fits."

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Next: --

Back: Jammer vs Piano - Part 7 - The Minor Scale System   

Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

 

Jammer vs Piano - Part 7 - The Minor Scale System

Explaining the Minor scale system

My guide to the minor scale system: essential features and terms for all musicians

Minor scales are poorly and incompletely explained in my textbooks; fortunately, the excellent teachers at Douglas College and the alternate viewpoint provided by my jammer helped me understand the system. I hope this little guide saves you time and effort.
 Any mistakes are solely mine. If you find errors, please let me know about them soonest.

The minor scales system developed haphazardly, so has odd conventions and notation. Fear not, the system is not that hard.

Scales are sets of notes, spaced in a fixed set of pitch intervals, and the set may be different ascending and descending. (Wikipedia: Scales)

A reasonable summary of the minor scales system is in chapter 7, Minor scales and keys (pg. 165) of The Musician's Guide to Fundamentals, Jane Piper Clendinning, et al., W.W. Norton, 2012

in order to understand the minor scales, let’s start with the Major scale, the workhorse of modern music. Each note in a scale has an exact, but pitch-distance relative to companion notes. Musicians are so familiar with the major scale that the notes are simply labelled 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, their uneven note-spacing is ignored, and the various scales are usually evaluated in terms of differences from the major scale.

The major scale‘s notes fit well together, for details, see:  how the major scale began and works.
[Diagram] Here are the jammer keys and sequence to press [diagram here] to play this scale.

Next, the Parallel key and the Natural Minor scale.
Every major key also has a closely related key, the parallel key, whose notes follow the natural minor scale, with notes 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7-8, where the b means “flatten the note by a semi-tone”.
The natural minor scale retains the all-important 1^st, 5^th, and 8^th (root, dominant and octave); and to a lesser degree the 4^th and 2^nd (sub-dominant and super-tonic) these notes fit together to create the scale’s tonal centre, the tonic. In very early music, this was called Aeolian mode and was perhaps favored because it works well with bells, the common musical instrument of the time.   The Aeolian scale’s flattened 3^rd, 6^th and 7^th tune well with the 5^th (dominant), 8^th (octave) and 2^nd (super-tonic). This different tuning makes for a nice, somewhat melancholy variation from the major scale.

The key signature for every parallel key has three flattened notes compared to its companion major scale, that is, the natural minor scale flattens the 3^rd, 6^th and 7^th notes of the major scale, while the tonic remains the same.  
For example, A major has 3 sharps, but A minor has 0 flats (3 sharps – 3 flats =  0 flats), G major has 1 sharp, while G minor has 2 flats (1 sharps – 3 flats =  2 flats).  Although the scale has 3 flattened notes, again the tonic remains the same.

The pure Natural Minor scale is not used today.
This lovely scale was the rage in early music. However the flattened 7^th note of the scale, the b7, is wishy-washy musically speaking, it lacks drive, especially in chords. Composers for the last century or so have favoured stealing the more harmonic 7^th note, the leading tone, from the major scale. This change creates the Harmonic Minor scale described below.

Neither is the Melodic Minor scale used.
This scale had a brief century’s vogue four hundred years ago, especially for singers.
It’s a variant on the Natural Minor scale: when going up flatten the third (b3), play the major scale’s 6^th and 7^th, but when descending play the natural minor’s b7, b6 and b3.

The Harmonic Minor key is the “real” minor key.

Composers like many aspects of the Natural Minor scale, but dislike its minor 7th, because the major 7th, the leading tone, can do cool musical things. So today’s universal, unspoken rule for minor scale notation is: 
                “Use the key signature for the natural minor scale: flatten the third, sixth, and seventh, but then make it ‘harmonic’ by re-sharpening the seventh.”

Yes, it's confusing, but generally, for anything written in the last century, "minor key X" or just "x minor" means harmonic minor; most or all of the piece’s sevenths have natural signs or sharp signs. 

Reading the Score’s Key Signature: deducing the tonal centre and scale.

The key signature of a score tells the piano player which notes to systematically flatten or sharpen, allowing the pianist to play in keys other than C. The details are fiddly and unimportant. The important thing is that a key signature implies two possible keys, with unrelated tonal centres and completely different jammer fingerings; these are called the relative major and relative minor keys.

These two keys  have tonal centres a minor third apart and a different scale pattern, despite sharing the same keyboard keys. Knowing the key does guide pianists where to put the hand and fingering.  E.g. zero sharps implies the thumb hang out near C for C-major, near A for A minor, and so on.  

Deducing the Relative Minor from the Relative Major.
The relative (natural/harmonic) minor scale has a tonal center three semitones, a minor third, lower than the major scale. For example, C has zero flats, so its relative minor A also has zero flats. The textbooks advise reading the Circle of Fifths chart and memorizing the relationships.

Deciding if the piece is the Relative Minor or the Relative Major.
Given two possibilities, which one applies? If you have a standard keyboard, inspect the beginning and end of the piece, the places that establish and conclude the piece’s key and tonal centre.  Look in the bass staff at these locations for the relative major and relative minor tonic note. Also look for the signature of a harmonic minor piece, accidentals (flats or sharps)  that raise the b7 to scale degree 7.

The jammer has a different way and needs no memorization.
See this following posting: Jammer shortcuts - Identifying the key, the tonal centre (tonic), scale and playing them.

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Next: Jammer vs Piano - Part 8 - Identifying the key, tonal centre & scale (major/minor) on jammers

Back:  Jammer vs Piano - Part 6B  - Jammer Problems

Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

Jammer vs Piano - Part 6B - Jammer Problems

Jammer Problems

The jammer has these minor, technical problems:

1. Playing two notes with one finger requires accurate placement of the finger-tip, which slows play a bit. The keys should be reshaped to give a larger target area. The piano has a similar problem where the white keys narrow between the black keys.
   
   
2. The keys should be about 1mm wider than in the Axis-49 design (21-mm instead of 19), to match the natural spacing of the fingers.
   
   
3. The keys should depress about 1mm more than in the Axis-49. 3mm would give the keys a better “touch” and control over the velocity of each key.
   
   
4. No C-major Glissando. The jammer just can't play one.
   It can, however, do these glissandos':  whole-note , 5ths, 4ths and some more complex ones.
   
   
5. Chromatic scales are require more work to learn. This is because the player must jump from the major 3rd to the 4th to the tritone, an unusual movement.  

In summary, the jammer has no technical problems that prevent it from being a good keyboard instrument.

 

The jammer has these significant "possible" problems:

1. A jammer player must to know how to read (or hear) the tonal centre, scale type and chord progressions of the music quickly and accurately.
   Knowing the tonal centre is needed helps infer chord progressions, read the score and play the melody.
   The musical score only states the keys on the standard keyboard to press. The standard musical score score does not directly tell the player what the tonal centre is or the chord progression. Jammer players need to deduce these musical details.
   
   Here’s a personal example: when I built my first jammer, I thought I’d try playing Happy Birthday by ear. Unfortunately, I had not worked out a fingering, the importance of hand placement, nor understood the importance of key signatures matching the fingering, .  Consequently, I learned to play Happy Birthday with the wrong key-centre, and now have trouble playing this simple piece.
   
   Recommendation:  the novice jammer player should practice finding the total center and scale.
   See: Jammer vs Piano - Part 7 - The Minor Scale System and Jammer vs Piano - Part 8 - Identifying the key, tonal centre & scale (major/minor) on jammers
   
   
   
   1. The musical score shows what keys to play on the standard keyboard, not on the jammer. There is a huge difference.
      The guitar is successful has a beautiful, well-developed tablature that shows new musicians exactly how to finger the frets and strum the strings. Unfortunately, there is, as yet, no jammer tablature.
      
      Look at this simple score; a set of ascending triads in the key of C covering a full octave. Each triad shows three notes stacked with the same spacing, the same “shape,” just turned into a vertical stack. These “stacks” match exactly the spacing and “shape” of the piano keys that must be played. The human brain can do a very simple mapping from a visual position to a physical position, a task which the mind excels at. Virtually no thinking is required, just routing what is seen to the fingers.
      
      With the jammer keyboard the brain cannot be as automatic, at least without significant training. In the example given above, the chords shift between major to minor and even diminished. Each of these kinds of chords has a specific shape, while the shape shown on the paper score is exactly the same.
      
      Thus, in playing the jammer while reading the score, I found a very significant cognitive “battle” 
      [insert picture of ascending triads, spanning C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C]
      [insert picture of jammer key<=>chord shapes]
      
      I believe that the above is not insurmountable and that a relatively simple set of exercises can be devised to train a player to translate the standard score automatically. Alternately, the novice player may be better off playing by ear or or reading fake charts.
      
      Note that any alternative musical instrument player will encounter problems reading a traditional score and playing the right notes.
      
      
      
2. The jammer keys’ layout may help train a musician’s ear much better than a traditional keyboard or it may make it lazy.
   As discussed in part 5 -Expecting the unexpected, it's hard to predict old systems, be they computer or musical.
   
   The jammer keyboard has an exact visual match between the musical pitch of every note, relative to other notes. This makes it easy to read the musical intervals between any two notes, and to read the make-up of each chord. This simplicity may have three effects: 
   1. It may help train the ear in relative pitch, possibly to a strong degree.
      Reasoning: The irregular key-spacing of the piano's keys may unintendedly train the brain not to learn relative pitch. Using an isomorphic keyboard may do the opposite.
   2. The jammer player may become lazy and depend on the instrument's geometry for relative pitch.
   3. It may not have a significant effect.
      
      At this point we don't have enough information.
3. The great reduction in time needed to learn to play in many different keys probably means the ear is less trained.
   This is discussed in posting part 5 -Expecting the unexpected, it is very likely that since the jammer needs much less finger training, ear training will suffer. To compensate we could:
   
   1. Devise a set of jammer exercises, possibly computer based, i.e. Musiah) to train the musical ear.
      
      
   2. Perhaps a novice musician should first play the jammer by ear and switch to reading later.

 Summary:

Technically, the jammer has a few things it can't do and a few technical things to improve, but in net it has many advantages over the piano.

The jammer player has to learn to read the music from a musical viewpoint, to understand it clearly and not just play notes. Since the notes are presented to the musician in a music-theory format, this should be fairly easy.

A set of jammer keyboard exercises to train essential keyboard fingering, score-reading skills and the musical ear would be very good to have.
A set of such exercises are under consideration.

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Next: Jammer vs Piano - Part 7 - The Minor Scale System

Back:  Jammer vs Piano - Part 6A - Jammer Advantages

Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

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Notes:

*  Exploring the Effects of Pitch Layout on Learning a New Musical Instrument, indicates that, over a short training period, the Wicki-Hayden layout of the jammer  is "optimal for playing melodies".

Jammer vs Piano - Part 6A - Jammer Advantages

Jammer Advantages?

Of all the possible isomorphic keyboard layouts, the Wicki-Hayden layout may be the fastest and most ergonomic, in theory. How does this layout actually turn out in practice?

I have experimented (my skill level is too low to say I ‘played’) with several hundred musical pieces using training programs Piano Marvel & Musiah, and the pieces assigned in the Douglas College MUSC 1160/1260 (Introductory Class Piano) courses over 8 months. This posting lists the positives I found.

The jammer has these advantages:

1. Four fingers can span well over an octave in routine melody and chord patterns without undue twisting or moving the hand.
   Mild stretching or hand twisting allows covering more than 2 octaves for special effects.
   Only four fingers are needed, leaving the thumb available to play extra notes. The index finger is capable of playing all “flat” (black-key) accidentals that come up, and the little finger can play four “sharp” accidentals.
   
   
2. The thumb is comfortably positioned and available to play many useful extra notes below the melody or chord the fingers are playing.
   In particular, a fourth, fifth, octave, an octave+fourth, octave+fifth and double-octave below are very easy to play with one hand. In other words, the thumb is freed to play a simple bass line, or thumb-operated pitch & modulation controls.
   
   
3. More notes are under the fingers than with the standard keyboard.
   On the jammer, using only the fingers, the player can immediately reach about 20 or so keys. On the standard keyboard, at any given time, the fingers and thumb can touch immediately about 13 notes or so; seven fewer keys.
   
   
4. The jammer has a standardized, quick-to-learn fingering.
   The jammer can be played with the hands in consistent positions, using a simple, uniform set of finger movements.
   The piano requires many complex movements, requiring various special techniques to speed play, like flipping the thumb under the hand or using the sustain pedal or pre-positioning the hand. These take time to learn.
   I can play arpeggios, complex scale patterns and chord progression faster on the jammer in all keys than on the piano (except some exercises (e.g. Hannon) that play better in C.
   
   
5. Big jumps (octave or more) are faster to learn and easier to perform.
   On the jammer, the hands need move a tenth the distance in a consistent direction or less to skip an octave.
   A much shorter, uniform travel distance helps the hand move quickly.
   Jammer key size, and key location match human finger size and finger flexibility.
   I can play arpeggios on the jammer, in all keys, faster than I can play them, in half as many keys, on the piano, despite having spent more hours practicing arpeggios on the piano.
   
   
6. Each chord, in each inversion, is always the same “shape”, thus easier to learn.
   On the jammer, the fingers always form the same 'shape' when pressing the keys for the chord for a given inversion, regardless of key (*) 
   For the major, minor, diminished and augmented triads, only twelve shapes need be learned. 
   The pianist's fingers have to reach in many ways to press the keys to make a chord: every chord has many “shapes” and the shape varies by key and inversion
           * Some pianists argue that small shape differences, e.g. flattening one note, are trivial; not really a different 'shape'.
   
   
7. Chord progressions need only small finger movements.
   On the jammer, the fingers generally only have to move to an an adjacent or pair of keys. 
   I found fingering some progressions on the piano to be awkward, especially in keys where the thumb had to press a black key, forcing hand adjustment, and perhaps starting with a different finger. This is a lot to learn.
   
   
8. Playing multiple notes with one finger is a very useful option
   The great advantage of the Wicki-Hayden layout’s adjacent major second, fourth and fifths: there are so many chords that contain these intervals. Playing two or occasionally three notes with a single finger makes for a reduction in finger movement and consequently an increase in play smoothness and speed.
   
   
9. Occasionally, sliding between notes is a handy trick. Especially useful for the index finger, which has to play all the flats and the fourth. Most commonly the minor third is followed by the fourth or vice-versa. It works well to slide the finger up or down a second. Another handy slide is up or down a fourth. (Moving up or down a fifth is rare for some reason.)

Note that the advantages listed above are technical fixes or improvements. This not surprising, as the jammer's Wicki-Hayden Key layout was chosen to fix known problems with the piano.

Summary of advantages

The jammer has lots of advantages over the piano, some quite significant.

But the jammer does have its problems. How do they stack up against the advantages?  And does solving the technical problems create systemic problems?
See the next posting.

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Next: Jammer vs Piano - Part 6B - Jammer Problems

Back:  Jammer vs Piano - part 5 - Piano Lessons

Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

 

Jammer vs Piano - part 5 - Expecting the unexpected

Bitten by the unpredictable

There is irony in the following story. Ten years ago I noticed that singers that play the piano have, on average, much better pitch-sense than those that learned in other ways. So I looked into studying that instrument to improve my sense of pitch but decided that learning to play all those keys was far too much work. 

I found out about the Thummer / jammer keyboards and decided to study them instead.

     I   should   have   known   better. 

Old systems always have hidden tricks

I spent 40 years of my life in the computer business, and about half of that time involved supporting "old" (anything installed last year or older) or "legacy" (the creators of said system were gone). Legacy systems were challenging devils, to put it mildly, and the older they were, the more challenging; the more risk there was of making a big fat, reputation-killing mistake. Pianos are one venerable "legacy" system, implying a bit of a risk. I hope, gentle reader, the following story will tell you why caution is advised.

The blank screen that supported an entire company

The insurance company where I worked had a Claims Management System.   Now, since processing insurance claims was a core function of the company (well duh!), the system was incredibly ancient, and based on processes originating in the founding year, 1917. The original card and paper-based system was automated and revised many, many times. We maintenance people knew it well. 

There was one nail-biting exception: a tiny little program, written in 1972 (let's call it TLP).  In the Disney-movie "Monsters, Inc." remember the scene where the big, fierce, hairy, multi-coloured dream-monster sees a cute little girl in his home and nearly dies of fright? Well, that's how wary we were of this undocumented micro monster.

Making it worse, it ran on an old operating system that we annually updated (think upgrading from Windows 1.0 to 2.1, to 3.0, to 3.1, to Win XP, and so on).  Written when computers cost more than a house, TLP could be vital, it could be useless, and we didn't know which. Not knowing what it did, we could not test it. Every time we upgraded, we crossed our fingers and hoped that all would still work.

Ironically, the very week we replaced the whole old system, we finally saw what TLP did. We were comparing the old and new systems by creating the same insurance claim in each. In the old system, the Claim Supervisor first cleared her screen, typed four characters to invoke TLP, hit the Enter key, pressed a few more keys, and a new claim number popped up onto the otherwise bare screen. This step took seconds; it would be easy to miss. 

The light bulb finally went on. TLP issued new, unique claim numbers. In each branch office, hundreds of times a day, a Claim supervisor asked TLP to dispense a brand-new claim number.  Our company depended on the 'little' job it did, which was so fundamental that no one ever thought about it.

The point? Old systems can have important, even essential but hidden actions.
The piano appears to be a totally innocent device, with no complications, right?

*******************

The unexpected happens in piano class

Musical instruments are not just gadgets, not just hardware, they are systems, and they interact with the most complex system of all, the human brain. Surprises may happen when creating new musical systems, and the best strategy is to expect some surprises. 

So are there equivalents to TLP in the piano ‘system’?

I suspect two biggies:  

1. Traditional Music notation (the musical score), the standard keyboard grew up together, and they fit together quite tightly in the brain.  
   New musical instruments can unwittingly break this cozy partnership.; some notation to keyboard fighting was expected, but this was way more than anticipated.
   
   In retrospect, we should have started with ear training, scales and chord progression exercises. In a planned set of postings, armed with the new knowledge, I will offer what I think will work, and we should be able to test effectiveness. 
   
   
2. Practice trains the brain; challenging musical practice trains the ear.
   This one is subtle. The traditional keyboard's keys have complex location and note assignment patterns.  A LOT of practicing and careful, careful listening is required to learn to play the right note at precisely the right time. The brain learns to translate from an irregular input device, the keys of the keyboard, the interacting notes and chords of each piece of music.
   
   Over time the playing of arpeggios, scales, and many other patterns, in many keys becomes utterly automatic. But, for all this to happen, the developing keyboardist must listen to and learn to move in precise ways.
   In other words, lots of difficult piano practice in different keys intensely trains the musical ear.
   
   Whereas with the jammer, the pitch-space is spelled out by the pattern, both visually and tactilely, so the brain may not get the same practice in listening. 
   
   My subjective impression (backed by my wife, who has perfect pitch) is that I have improved my pitch-sense more from 8 months of learning the piano than I have from 5 years of jammer practice.

A mistake that leads to a musical journey of discovery

So, ironically, building a jammer to train my ear may have been a mistake! Not quite Christopher Columbus' error in sailing for China, but a mistake nonetheless.

Fortunately, I have learned from my endeavors. If you are reading this and learning something useful, please let me know. 

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For more information, see these "Jammer vs Piano" articles:

Next: Jammer vs Piano - Part 6A - Jammer Advantages

Back:  Jammer vs Piano - part 4 - Piano Lessons

Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

 

Jammer vs Piano - part 4 - Piano Lessons

A good course to teach a complex skill

Douglas College in Greater Vancouver has very interesting piano lesson classes. They are aimed at musicians that already have musical experience in high school., such as guitar and woodwinds. I found my modest experience in playing the jammer invaluable; without this practice, I would have been most truly sunk.

 We launched into basic simple 4-fingered  (tetrachord) patterns covering an octave and quickly expanded to 5 fingers on each hand. More complex fingering techniques were brought in. and more and more keys and scales were introduced. Eventually, we worked up to playing "exotic" minor keys and arpeggios, some of which involved "very weird fingerings", in the words of our teacher Barry.

Learn, Embellish, Repeat

One basic teaching technique was "learn, embellish"; "learn, embellish more": We would learn a simple technique, like playing a major scale in C, then learn all the simple variants: F and G (one note change),  then to play in the left hand, then learn D and Bb (two notes change), etc. By the end, we were playing with scales starting in keys with black notes, which requires a different set of fingers and thumb.  The net effect of "learn, embellish" was a big reduction in learning time and lots of repetition of basic finger movements. My ears also got a strong workout, as I had to hold a firm image in my head of the notes of the scale and check that the notes pressed matched the image. 

It is often mentioned by jammer advocates that "the piano has 24 fingerings" (implying that it takes 24 times much practice to learn as). But, as taught at the college, the piano student really learns 3 or so basic fingerings with 8 variations. The left-hand does pick up a bit of skill transfer from the right hand (nothing like the heavy skill transfer when learning the jammer). The net effect is that the piano only requires, to be proficient in all keys, I guesstimate 3-5 times the practicing that the jammer would require. 

But note, however, the term "proficient in all keys" above. The student at this point, madly learning to play, can skimp on the proficiency. Learning to play well in 5 keys, play OK 4 keys, and poorly in the 3 remaining is reasonable, and what the teacher accepted.

Curiously, the "learn, embellish; learn, embellish more" technique is very similar to the "deep practice" Daniel Coyle and others advocate. Training situations where one is at the edge of ability, making a controlled number of mistakes - and correcting them immediately – is an  excellent way to practice. 

And also note that the practice is training both the fingers and the ear. The intense ear training has implications discussed in the next article: Jammer vs Piano - part 5 - Expecting the unexpected.

An excellent textbook

The course textbook (Contemporary Class Piano ) was scarily massive and excellent. The teacher, Barry Barrington, himself a virtuoso pianist, selected small, relevant sections of the text to master, and gave us students a broad choice of pieces to learn.

Was anything missing?

An overview might have been nice.

There were some "overview" topics that I expected to present in this university-level course:

• Background on the musical layout of the piano: notes have what musical effect, how long they sustain  
• Where the percussion section starts,
• Where the optimum chordal section is,
• What parts are best suited to create a desired musical effect?

 These concepts and more have been around for years: see "How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home" by Ward Cannel & Fred Marx. Mind you, it can be well argued that the student, over the course of the next 8 plus years practicing the piano, will figure out and/or absorb unconsciously much of  the above points, without needing to be taught.

Am I just supposed to "know" how to learn the piano because I learned to play the sax?

A considerable body of solid experimental evidence has been built up in the last 2 decades about how to effectively practice and learn. I was modestly surprised that nothing was mentioned about effective practicing.  Barry showed a cute video that urged practicing rather than dilly-dallying.  little was said about how to best learn; no review of practice and learning techniques.

For a good overview of what I mean, see: Daniel Coyles' The-talent-code, and Book review: Geoff Colvins' Talent is Overrated. Note: in the college's defense, that the class did, I think, use Coyles techniques with it's "Learn, Embellish, Repeat" system mentioned above. I just suggest making them conscious. 

Learning modern practice techniques is (in my opinion) extremely important: Research has found it not just a matter of practice amount, it's a matter of practice quality. The college program provided the expert coaching, but did not show us how to slow it down, how much to focus on the accuracy vs speed, and techniques for breaking it into manageable, learn-able chunks, this was left to the student.

 Subtle Links between the score and the piano

If one only plays the piano, the subtle, but very deep connection between the traditional Music notation and the standard keyboard layout is not obvious. It just is a designed fact.  It's everywhere; place your fingers here, and sharpen or flatten (shift the finger left or right a centimeter) the notes per the key you are in, ét viola! the right interval, the correct major or minor third, the correct complex chord  magically appears. I expect that this would become automatic and very fast, provided one is young. When one is 65, perhaps not so much. I'm getting a glimmer of this automation but it's slow in growing.

 Subtler Yet Links between the piano and my brain's perception of pitch

 I am bemused often by an everyday skill everyone has. I consider it one of the most astonishing feats of computation in the world. People pick up a smart phone and start texting. Typing away with either thumb, both  thumbs. Just doing it.

This generates the question: anyone older than 35 learned to "touch-type" on a full keyboard with really, moving key, using all fingers, so how do they automatically know how to type on a dinky little screen with one and/or two thumbs?

The answer, of course, is the that the brain is astonishingly good at creating good, flexible mental background image. In the texting case mentioned, the mind maps the learned image to the current image size and guides the fingers to targets in that image. Computationally, this is a greater feat than doing a hand-spring.  Backwards.

Playing a piano requires a similar mental feat. Ponder the dynamic "musical image" a pianist must have. The ear is hearing just 88 notes evenly spaced in pitch, a semi-tone apart. Yet when playing the hands are in different relative places on the keyboard, continually moving around  in 3 dimensions, the fingers shifting to sharpen or flatten a note as needed. That must be one heck of a image! The brain of the poor pianist is forced to do an awful lot of work. Those target, semi-tone-spaced notes must be very clearly marked and understood by the brain. 

The jammer and any other isomorphic (evenly spaced notes), instrument does not make the mind do the same amount of work.The hands generally stay in one place, or move in simple ways.

Does this make a practical difference?  In my very preliminary experience, it does. Occasionally in the last few months of playing the piano, I've had flashes of the "exact" note placement in my choral music. When I do, my wife (she of perfect pitch) reports that my pitch accuracy takes a big jump.

Could it be that intensely playing the piano for 8 months could do what 6 years of playing the jammer less intensely did not do? This must be investigated.

Summary:

I have spent 8 months learning the piano, with modest success: I passed the course, but can't play the piano, and the pieces I learned, well. 

I did learn :

1. To play the same pieces on both the jammer and the piano, so that I can compare the two instruments.
   (Note: I am a musical klutz, but I'll be the same musical klutz on both devices)  
2. As suspected, it was way easier to read a score and play a piano than to read a score and play a jammer.
3. Learning to play the piano may have trained my ear more than playing the jammer did.
4. Lots of basics about how piano teachers simplify the learning of the instrument, by starting in the simplest techniques and gradually adding on complications.

As a unexpected side-effect (the course syllabus did not mention) My musical sense of pitch improved significantly. 

Jammer vs Piano - part 2: No Qualifications, little Experience, deep Interest

First, a bit of background 

I'm a retired "computer systems analyst": I analyzed old computer systems and tried to improve them. 

The first jammer, made from a Yamaha keyboard

Musical instruments, learning them, and all associated processes are, to me, a system. I chanced across a proposed musical instrument that has many good features and built some.  But construction is, in my experience, less than half what's needed. All systems, musical or computer, need a way to operate them and a way to learn to use them.  Since no-one else has volunteered, I'm figuring out what I can about this new musical system and hope to help you learn it, should you want to. 

I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a musician. Instead, I am a geeky nerd with a combination of mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and a middling - but unexceptional knowledge of the science behind music. I do sing with three choruses and take a part-time college music program, so I'm not wholly non-musical.

 I fell in love with instruments that didn't actually exist

A decade ago I was smitten by the concept of the "Thummer", a prototype alternative music keyboard that, alas, never got off the ground. That didn't stop me (note the term "mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" above). With the support of a small online community, I started building these keyboards myself, refining the design into the "jammer keyboard", Then a miracle: we found the Axis-49, a newly-introduced keyboard convertible into good jammers.

 

The real fun begins

The second jammer, electronics from a keyboard

Once built (I built 5, others built some as well), the jammers had to be played. That's when inflated expectations and great hopes met poor ability.

These good-enough instruments reveal the limitations of this wannabe musician. Although I passed Music Theory both at Simon Fraser University and Douglas College, my musical ear is not very good. My hand coordination on keyboards is mediocre-to-lousy. Worse, my sense of rhythm is somewhere in Mexico, sipping margaritas with Jimmy Buffet. With these limitations, I cannot demonstrate directly the jammer. 

Somebody has to do it

But, I can tell you what I've found in a "systems analysis" kind of way.  I hope that you will find these following articles interesting and useful.

 

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 The next article: Jammer vs Piano - part 3: Methodology: comparing apples and oranges?  [under development]

Next:     Jammer vs Piano - part 4 - Piano Lessons

Back:     Jammer vs Piano - part 1B: What is a Jammer; highlights & discoveries

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 Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

Jammer vs Piano - part 1B: What is a Jammer; highlights & discoveries overview

What the heck is a jammer?

Good question.  Here's the Jammer Wikipedia entry, but all you have to know is that Kaspar Wicki in 1896 and later Brian Haynes in 1986 arranged the notes on their instruments using music theory. (Wikipedia: Music Theory) Using two dimensions and small keys, they created a compact keyboard that places more keys under the fingers than a piano does. In our opinion, this layout is the best, ergonomically, of all the instruments we have reviewed - see Isomorphic Musical Keyboards.

Fast-forward to the present: with the help of the online community and great luck, we managed to create "Wicki-Hayden" keyboards and help others make them. We now call them "jammer keyboards" because the design lends itself to jazz jamming. Besides, we think "jammer" well describes the coolness of our keyboards. 

Please, do note that the difference between a jammer and a piano is less than it appears. With the jammer, fundamentally all we do is to change the placement, shape and colour of our instrument's keys and pair keyboards symmetrically.

These changes greatly simplify hand & finger movement, reducing the distance the hands move by a factor of ten or more and standardizing movement.  

Imagine those letters in a piano keyboard

Imagine a typewriter built like a piano

Here's an analogy: picture a computer keyboard with each key placed on a single row, stretching out left and right, instead of the standard Qwerty pattern shown. Intuitively, a long line of keys would take longer to learn and be slower to operate. 

 

 

 

 

Minor refinements add up

We jammer enthusiasts continue to refine and test jammer design. For example, the notion of paired, symmetrical keyboards was highly controversial at first.  Then testing showed that using the same fingers on each hand to create the same sounds and chords greatly speeds learning. Further, two-thirds of playing skills learnt by one hand transferred to the other hand. 

We found that jammer keyboards may have more keys than a piano yet remain light, portable and powered by a smart-phone, with seam-less thumb-accessible pitch and modulation controls.

Systematically colouring the keys helps guide play and may train the player's ear. 

The effects of many "small" changes do mount up and create a musical instrument that, in theory, should be fast, versatile and easy to learn. However, in the real world, there is a vast gap between "should" and "Demonstrated Fact." Fixing one thing may break something else.

 

 

Full-width jammer keyboard, with both flat and sharp keys

 About 50% more keys under the fingers & 3 cm octave jumps

 

So does it work?

 

 

 

Well ... Yes, and No. The instrument works quite well physically and is a good platform for composing (my opinion, after composing pieces in music theory classes, using a jammer). 

I found the jammer to be much faster to learn and usually easier to play. Since musical intervals have a precise relative position, it may encourage learning precise relative pitch.

However, there are challenges. They appear at this point to be easily remedied by directed lessons, as is discussed in later articles.

Humble pie

Perhaps the biggest problem for the novice is psychological. To the novice, to the casual observer, it appears that the main skill of the pianist is t0 know the right fingering of the piano. Especially if the observer is a musician with singing or single-note instrument skills. This caught yours truly. The reasoning was thus
"I already have rhythm skills, and enough of a musical ear to sing in choirs. If I have an instrument that has only a single fingering, instead of 24. I should be able to learn it easily".  

You still have to practice, to 'pay your dues'

Having an instrument that has many fewer fingerings to learn will not remove the need to learn many other skills. You still have to learn rhythm, rhythm, and yet more rhythm. You have to train your ear. You have to practice until the instrument becomes one with your fingers. You have to learn to be a musician, the whole of which is more than the parts.  The jammer will not help with these skills. 

Still, a lot of practicing can be saved. However, at this point, it's unclear what percentage reduction, how many hours of practice will be saved. 

Surprising things can trip up the novice learner. Here's an example: in my piano classes my teacher's most plaintive cry was "Ken, watch your accidentals". I was always forgetting to read my accidentals off the score, and forgetting to play them in pieces that I knew. Why? On the jammer, many of the accidentals were automatically taken care of by changing the position of the hand. Consequently, I built up less skill around accidentals compared to my compatriots.  

The jammer saves significant time in some areas:

• Much practice to learn fingering and hand movement in 12 keys, on each hand does not have to be done. 
• The jammer player will be equally fast in each musical key, with either hand.
• Skills learned with one hand will be available on the other.

More to Come

For more information, see these "Jammer vs Piano" articles:

 Next: part 2: No Qualifications, little Experience, deep Interest 

Back: part 1: Comparing musical instruments; modern to age-old

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 Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

 

Jammer vs Piano - part 1: Comparing musical instruments; modern to age-old

New instruments illuminate music theory

Do you want to gain a fresh insight into musical instrument design and music theory? Do you build or use 21st-century musical instruments? If so, this series of articles is for you.

First, a disclaimer; "Jammer vs Piano" is a catchy phrase, but both instruments have merit; both challenge and reward the player. The jammer keyboard in no way diminishes the piano keyboard; this is a daughter/mother relationship.  However, as a good Daughter should, I believe the jammer sheds light on some of the quirks of her Mother, the piano, and shows the incredible talent of pianists and organists.

With these postings, I hope to show tres-cool and unexpected things about new alternative musical instruments. The intent is to save you, fellow musician and instrument builder, a significant amount of fiddle, trouble and frustration. To let you what you are getting into, to progress more quickly, and avoid wandering blind alleys.  

What I want to share with you

• First, I’ve developed and extensively tested a music-theory based alternative musical keyboard called a jammer, and worked out how to play it. The prototype plays well, with an ergonomic fingering system.  Pieces in major keys have nearly all fast, easy fingerings, while minor pieces have a bit more challenging movements. Even ragtime, with many semi-tone jumps and chromatic scales, is playable.
  
  
• Second, most new musical keyboard designs use a consistent-interval (isomorphic) note and key pattern, making the new instrument easier to learn. However, a consistent pattern breaks some centuries-old unconscious musical assumptions. This, in turn, causes unexpected challenges, but ones we hope to work around and document for posterity. See: Part 5: Expecting the Unexpected
  
  
• Third, I am learning both the piano and jammer keyboards and taking notes comparing the two. I am working out simple ways to measure their relative play-ability, discovering what specific skills an alternative instrument player needs. Alas, I have near-zero musical talent so can’t directly demonstrate the differences between the two instruments by playing them.
  
  
• Fourth, I hope to use the results of step three, to create lessons focusing on crucial musical skills for the new instrument, creating training to teach the key areas where a novice needs help. These include proper jammer fingering of scales, arpeggios and chord progressions, reading the score, ear training via the new instrument, advice on what to focus on, and what traditions to ignore.

Please give feedback.

More to Come

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For more information, see these "Jammer vs Piano" articles:

Next: part 1B: What is a Jammer; highlights & discoveries

 Jammer vs Piano: Table of contents

A Gentleman Craftsman: Roger Linn and his LinnStrument

Where the future's instruments are designed (image courtesy Google Maps)

A new Craftsman of Musical instruments

If I was to visit a luthier, I have a preconception of the encounter; I would expect comfortable rooms and spaces with white plaster and the outside whitewashed and a garden of olive trees. Uber-Luthier Roger Linn certainly did not disappoint; both in dwelling*, and in himself; he is both a gentleman and master crofter of new instruments. Be clear, Roger does not build exotic musical toys: his products are aimed at giving professionals and high-level amateurs more ways to express themselves.  

* The trees weren’t olives, but they were close enough.

Last April (yes, yes, I know; I am dreadfully tardy in posting this) my wife and I were in the Bay Area and presumed upon this busy man in asking for a visit and demonstration of his new instrument, the LinnStrument. Following are my thoughts, as a serious part-time music student and instrument maker, for what they are worth.

First:  this is a wonderful instrument. It's the best on the market, both considering the low US$1500 price tag, and the instrument’s musical flexibility, expressiveness and built-in craftsmanship. The term "craftsmanship" is usually applied to hand-made instruments, but believe me, designing a musical interface takes great care; the devil truly is in the interacting details and seemingly endless, endless refinements required. Five dimensions of expression, three more than a piano allows, are not easy to enable.

For proof, here are some demos of the LinnStrument. In particular, see Stephen Barnard’s "Wee Small Hours"

Second, MPE (Midi Polyphonic Expression) is finally maturing (I gather Roger had a hand in this process). The MPE extension to the now ancient MIDI standard worked well: the polyphonic synth sounds I heard were clean, vivid and lacked noticeable latency. Just as important, the synths seemed to be easy to set up, and run.

Third: this new instrument is about as good as can be created with current technology. Roger spent considerable time explaining the LinnStrument to my wife and myself, and I had the chance to experiment with his instrument, focusing on its ergonomics, finger placement and its differences from the instruments I know. He knew of, and obviously understood well, the jammer keyboard layout I favor. Roger gave succinct reasons why the LinnStrument could not easily use the jammer layout. His "LinStrument" layout spreads out whole tones to enable glissando and pitch-bends. The jammer layout squeezes the semi-tones off t0 the sides, and puts the most used notes under the fingers, enabling greater fingering speed.

Fourth, the LinnStrument is an excellent keyboard for Bass and guitar players.
One favoured layout for the LinnStrument is Fourths String; ascending fourths along the y-axis and ascending semitones on the x-axis. This matches the layout of guitars and many other stringed instruments. Unsurprisingly, guitar-playing the reviewers and early adopters report the LinnStrument is easy for them to pick up.

Fifth, the same may not be true for some pianists for 2 big reasons:

• Adding other dimensions to movement, especially vertical movement, may be quite a challenge
  
  
• Over the last half-year I’ve been learning the piano, and I’ve spent three years learning an alternative, the jammer keyboard. I found the traditional musical score spoon-feeds finger placement to pianists to an amazing degree. If a pianist relies on automatic transcription (and many do), switching to a LinnStrument will be tough indeed.
  
  However, other pianists “play by ear”; they read a score, and translate the score to mental musical notes and chords. For them, I expect the LinnStrument will be easy to learn.

Sixth, I am frankly surprised that the instrument has not gotten a lot more buzz: all the reviews I’ve seen are positive, if not laudatory. The instrument is easy to use, is getting more so as the software is tweaked; it gives access unique expressiveness and allows good musician to diversify, to become a good-or-better player of many instruments, and it’s not expensive (only $1500), less than a decent guitar or Yamaha keyboard.

Patience may be needed here, although a good 1,400 units have been sold to date, implying sales of $2.1 million, a quite decent level for a new instrument sold solely by word-of-mouth and magazine reviews. This level of sales also implies that the LinnStrument is a commercial success and will be available for years.

My Last Note

 If you are looking to diversify beyond the musical mainstream, and especially to get ahead and distinguish yourself from the musical competition, the LinnStrument is the instrument I recommend. It’s open-ended, flexible and undergoing continual innovation, easy to use, expressive and sounds good.

Also, it will give you new, fresh views of music and you will have fun with it**.  ‘Nuff Said

Ken Rushton

** speaking from personal experience with the jammer keyboard.

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Notes:

• Good support has been reported by early adopters
• The LinnStrument does not make sounds on its own
• it hard to see this as a concern when an iPad or one’s cellphone can be a better synth than the best one could buy 10 years ago
• Not available yet, but only a matter of time, is Midi MPE apps for smartphones

• The LinnStrument gives you multiple and much better / intuitive “views” of music theory than a standard keyboard – very handy in composition
  
  
• My fingers could adapt from the “jammer layout” to the LinnStrument
  
  

• A sample of reviews (I've yet to see a negative review) of the LinnStrument:

• Why Is It So Hard for New Musical Instruments to Catch On? William Weir Feb 7, 2012, The Atlantic. The reviewer calls LinnStrument “one of the best”
  
  
• Jordan Rudess on Alternate Instruments; Keyboard Magazine: Stephen Fortner/Jordan Rudess· May 26, 2015 The LinnStrument is Rudess’ favorite
  
  
• Read this tribute to the LinnDrums by Todd Rundgren, that Roger received when getting a Technical Grammy Award in 2011: “My first LinnDrum fascinated and frightened me…”