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".