 The layout of a typical musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers on a musical instrument which cause the instrument to produce sounds. Image File history File links Klaviatur-3-en. ...
Image File history File links Klaviatur-3-en. ...
A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ...
Keyboards almost all share the common layout shown. Musical instruments with keyboards of this type include the piano, harpsichord, clavichord, organ, electric piano, electronic piano, digital piano, synthesizer, "arranger keyboard" or "home keyboard" (also called "electronic keyboard"), celesta, dulcitone, accordion, melodica, glasschord, and carillon. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often called the piano keyboard. A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ...
A grand piano, with the lid up. ...
Harpsichord in the Flemish style A harpsichord is any of a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument currently called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the muselar virginals and the spinet. ...
Large five-octave unfretted clavichord by Paul Maurici, after J.A. Haas The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. ...
Organ in Katharinenkirche, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Modern style pipe organ at the concert hall of Aletheia University in Matou, Taiwan The organ is a keyboard instrument with one or more manuals, and usually a pedalboard. ...
An electric piano (e-piano) is an electric musical instrument whose popularity was at its greatest during the 1960s and 1970s. ...
An electronic piano is an entirely electronic musical instrument designed to simulate the timbre of a piano (and sometimes a harpsichord) using analog circuitry. ...
A digital piano is a modern electronic musical instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to a traditional piano, both in the way it feels to play and in the sound produced. ...
A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument designed to produce electronically generated sound, using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM, physical modelling synthesis, phase distortion, or Scanned synthesis. ...
An electronic keyboard is a keyboard instrument which uses electricity to produce or amplify its sound. ...
An electronic keyboard is a keyboard instrument which uses electricity to produce or amplify its sound. ...
French type, four-octave Celesta The Celesta (IPA ) is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. ...
A dulcitone is a keyboard instrument in which sound is produced by a range of tuning forks, which vibrate when struck by felt-covered hammers activated by the keyboard. ...
This article is about the instrument as a whole. ...
A Hohner melodica The melodica is a free-reed instrument similar to the accordion and harmonica. ...
The glasschord (or glasscord) is a crystallophone resembles the celesta but uses keyboard-driven hammers to strike glass bars instead of metal bars. ...
The Netherlands Carillon in Arlington, Virginia, USA. A carillon is a musical instrument composed of at least 23 cup-shaped bells played from a baton keyboard using fists and feet (such an instrument with fewer than this number of bells is known as a chime). ...
Description
The twelve notes of the Western musical scale are laid out with the lowest note on the left; the larger keys (for the seven "natural" notes of the C major scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B) jut forward. Because these keys are often coloured white on a keyboard, these are often called the white notes or white keys. The keys for the remaining five notes which are not part of the C major scale (namely C♯/D♭, D♯/E♭, F♯/G♭, G♯/A♭, A♯/B♭) are set back. Because these keys are often coloured black, these notes are often called the black notes or black keys. The pattern repeats at the interval of an octave. In music, a scale is a set of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. ...
In music, a scale is a set of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. ...
In music, an octave (sometimes abbreviated 8ve or 8va) is the interval between one musical note and another with half or double the frequency. ...
The arrangement of longer keys for C major with intervening, shorter keys for the intermediate semitones dates to the 15th century. Many keyboard instruments dating from before the nineteenth century have a keyboard with the colours of the keys reversed - darker coloured keys for the white notes and white keys for the black notes. A few electric and electronic instruments have had this feature; Vox's electronic organs of the 1960s, Hohner's Clavinet L, one version of Korg's Poly-800 synthesizer and Roland's digital harpsichords. Some 1960s electronic organs used reverse colors or gray sharps or naturals to indicate the lower part(s) of a split keyboard. Farfisa's FAST series of portable organs had black, light gray and dark gray naturals and white sharps. It should be noted that the reverse-colored keys on Hammond organs such as the B3, C3 and A100 are not playable keys; they physically latch when pressed, and serve as selector switches for preset sounds. A clavinet is a keyboard instrument, manufactured by the Hohner company. ...
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Size and Historical variation
 A Roland EXR-3 Arranger Keyboard The chromatic compass of keyboard instruments has tended to increase. Harpsichords often extended over five octaves (61+ keys) in the 18th century, while most pianos manufactured since about 1870 have 88 keys. Some modern pianos have even more notes (a Bösendorfer 225 has 92 and a Bösendorfer 290 "Imperial" has 97 keys). Modern synthesizer keyboards commonly have either 61, 76 or 88 keys. Organs normally have 61 keys per manual, though some spinet models have 44 or 49. An organ pedalboard, a keyboard played by the organist's feet, may vary in size from 12 to 32 notes. Image File history File links Roland EXR-3 keyboard. ...
Image File history File links Roland EXR-3 keyboard. ...
Roland Corporation TYO: 7944 is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. ...
The 30-note pedalboard of a Rieger organ with expression pedal and coupler switches. ...
In a typical keyboard layout, black note keys have uniform width, and white note keys have uniform width and uniform spacing at the front of the keyboard. In the larger gaps between the black keys, the width of the natural notes C, D and E differ slightly from the width of keys F, G, A and B. This allows close to uniform spacing of 12 keys per octave while maintaining uniformity of 7 natural keys per octave. This scheme has the most uniform distribution, given fixed accidental key width, though not all keyboards are produced this way.
Over the last three hundred years, the octave span distance found on historical keyboard instruments (organs, virginals, clavichords, harpsichords, and pianos) has ranged from as little as 125mm to as much as 170mm. Modern piano keyboards ordinarily have an octave span of 164-165mm, but several reduced-size standards have been proposed and marketed, including a 15/16 size (152 mm octave span) and the 7/8 DS Standard (140 mm octave span) developed by Canadian composer, conductor and pianist Christopher Donison in the 1970s then further developed and now marketed by Steinbuhler & Company, located in Titusville, Pennsylvania. U.S. pianist Hannah Reiman has promoted piano keyboards with narrower octave spans and has a U.S. patent (#6,020,549) on apparatus and methods for modifying existing pianos to provide interchangeable keyboards of different sizes.
There have been variations in the design of the keyboard to address technical and musical issues. For instance, during the sixteenth century, when instruments were often tuned in meantone temperament, some harpsichords were constructed with the G♯ and E♭ keys split into two. One portion of the G♯ key operated a string tuned to G♯ and the other operated a string tuned to A♭, similarly one portion of the E♭ key operated a string tuned to E♭, the other portion operating a string tuned to D♯. This extended the flexibility of the harpsichord, enabling composers to write keyboard music calling for harmonies containing the so-called wolf fifth G-sharp♭ to E-flat♯, but without producing discomfort in the listeners. Other examples of variations in keyboard design include the Janko keyboard and the chromatic keyboard systems on the accordion and bandoneón. Meantone temperament is a system of musical tuning. ...
When the twelve notes within the octave are tuned using meantone temperament, one of the fifths will be much sharper than the rest. ...
The Janko keyboard is a musical keyboard layout for a piano designed by Paul von Janko. ...
This article is about the instrument as a whole. ...
Bandoneon Cardenal (made by ELA for Hohner) The bandoneón is a free-reed instrument particularly popular in Argentina. ...
Playing techniques In spite of their apparent similarity, keyboard instruments of different types often require subtly different techniques. For instance, a piano will produce a louder note the faster the key is depressed. On the other hand the volume and timbre of the sound on the pipe organ are dictated by the flow of air from the bellows and the stops selected by the player; in the harpsichord the strings are plucked and the volume of the note is not perceptibly varied by using a different touch on the keyboard. Players of these instruments must use other techniques to colour the sound. The arranger keyboard uses pre-set drum rhythms which respond to chords played in the left hand by the instrumentalist, with other buttons and switches used to change rhythms and even the voice of the instrumtent. Organ in Katharinenkirche, Frankfurt am Main, Germany // The pipe organ (Greek ὄÏγανον, órganon) is a musical instrument that produces sound by admitting pressurized air through a series of pipes. ...
An electronic keyboard is a keyboard instrument which uses electricity to produce or amplify its sound. ...
Other uses Other instruments share the keyboard layout, although they are not keyboard instruments. For example the xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel all have a separate sounding tone bar for each note, and these bars are laid out in the same configuration as a common keyboard. Xylophone in Bali 1937 The xylophone (from the Greek meaning wooden sound) is a musical instrument in the percussion family which probably originated in Indonesia (Nettl 1956, p. ...
The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. ...
A typical Ludwig-Musser vibraphone. ...
Most orchestral glockenspiels are mounted in a case. ...
References - Bond, Ann (1997). A Guide to the Harpsichord. Amadeus Press. ISBN 1-57467-063-8.
See also A grand piano, with the lid up. ...
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