Building a better keyboard - Easier to Learn?

What if there was a musical instrument that was easier to learn, faster to play and best of all, provided a special insight into how music comes into being?  

Herein I present the “jammer”, an innovative musical keyboard design, and why it’s so cool.

The 12 notes of the scale

First, let’s design a music keyboard from scratch, as if you’d never seen one before.
There are 12 notes in an octave,
     spaced apart by a semitone. 
     Two semitones steps make a wholetone.

 

Step 1: Lay out the keys in one row all equally spaced by semi-tones, like this, and you have the layout of a harp's strings (in the uncommon {so I am told} 6x6 arrangement).

Twelve notes on two rows

But unlike in a harp, we don't have to be linear, and we don't have to base our design on a early harp-like instrument that only had the C-major scale's notes.
Next: It makes sense to stagger notes so they alternate: 

And slam them closer together:

 

  

Notes of the major scale

 

So far so simple. If you play all in sequence all 12 notes you get a chromatic scale, presumably so named because it has every color of note on the scale. Most musical scales are whole tone based, with the type defined, largely, by the notes they skip, and when they sneak in a semitone jump. With this layout, a major scale goes as shown right:

 

 

If you add a third row on top, then you can play any scale, in any key using the same pattern.

 

Playing major scale on jammer

You have much less to learn – 1/12th (!) as many patterns as on a standard piano keyboard.

This is the Janko pattern and is over a century old.

It's also a trifle bulky, as you can see if you click the above link.

The technical term, used (I suspect) to either scare off non-geeks or to sound intellectual is isomorphism. I prefer the term consistent-interval, or simply consistent. (Personally I bet we'll one day hear the term in a science fiction show: "he's gone isomorphic, Jim")

Compare to learning the piano as show here:

Playing major scales on piano

It was first designed without black notes,
and its totally designed around the C-major scale. 

Other scales are fiendishly hard to play.

It's rumored that the Janko pattern was scuttled, despite being favored by noted pianists, by piano teachers. Who would have thought!

 

 

So, there you have part one - make a keyboard consistent, and it's (a lot!) easier to learn.
Part two is here.

Comments

[Shadrach Z]

"Step 1: Lay out the keys in one row all equally spaced by semi-tones, like this, and you have the layout of a harp's strings."

Can I call you up on that? There aren't really any widespread instruments that have all the strings arranged like that where you actually play the strings directly. A harp has only 7 notes per octave, with either a complex mechanical pedal system or little brass levers to get the sharps and flats (although you do - rarely - get cross-strung harps with a Janko layout, which means you can play chromatic music really easily, at the expense of no longer being able to do a diatonic scale glissando - a harsh trade-off for a harpist to decide on).

I also note that you call C#major one of the hardest scales to play, and I am reminded of the Indian harmonium, a Western instrument which has been adapted to a musical culture that traditionally favoured a home key near enough what we call C#, and therefore, unless you have one with a clever but clunky and fragile mechanism that shifts the entire keyboard sideways to transpose, you're probably going to be playing in C# a lot of the time. Now there's an instrument that is crying out for a Janko version to become available.