I watched this, it's a fun video. Turns out an isomorphic piano is one where the gap between every key of the same type (white and black on a regular piano, but here "raised" and "lower", or "fat" and "skinny" or pick your own names) is a tone. There's a skinny raised key between every lower fat key. Chords are always the same shape in every key, but I'm not convinced that's much of an advantage. It looks hard to play, but the video host makes a good go of it.
The only thing such keyboards are good for is transposing, and this one doesn't even help for all transpositions, only half of them. So you can learn something in one key, and then pretty easily play it in one of 5 other keys (note that transposing from e.g. C to D is trivial, but C to G is not). But that's about it.
It might have some minor advantages, but there are probably also disadvantages: this doesn't help you learn the different modes (minor, dorian, etc.). Instead, they might be hindered by your muscle memory.
So, for comping it can shine, but for normal music, probably a disadvantage. I certainly don't see any advantage that should make everybody switch.
I don’t know of any comparisons, but anecdotally, I play both piano and button accordion and my guess is that piano keys would be easier for beginners, due to the direct mapping to sheet music. Beginners start in C major using just the white keys and then added sharps or flats are the black keys. (Then you learn to play in other keys, but gradually.)
A chromatic button accordion has other compensating advantages but I don’t find either one easier overall. They’re just different. You get better with practice.
I play the piano professionally. The issue with these unorthodox keyboard layouts is that the repertoire of the Common Practice Period (“classical music”) is written in a way that assumes the conventional keyboard geography. I can imagine certain reaches, for example, that are manageable only because the relationship between keys is just so. I’d be interested in seeing the Schumann Symphonic Etudes played on this piano. The last variation has running passages in chords that span over an octave. If the keys are monospaced, I don’t see how such intervals would be played by humans.
Music for an instrument co-evolves with the instrument itself. If an isomorphic piano pushes music co-evolved with a conventional layout out of reach, it would equally bring music that hasn't been written because it works poorly with a conventional layout but works with the isomorphic layout into reach. And yet some other layout would push some things out of reach but bring other things into reach.
Which is to say, it isn't a surprise that music co-evolved with a particular instrument might be difficult on some other one; it's the expected, perfectly normal, perfectly predictable result, and isn't really a criticism of the new instrument. Unless you're willing to equally criticize the conventional instrument for all the music it can't play very well, but then, even so, it's a very symmetric criticism in the end and doesn't amount to much.
Except for some niche Janko-layout keyboards like the WholeTone Revolution and Lumatone, isomorphic pianos haven't every really caught on. However, isomorphic layouts are very common on accordions! I have a chromatic button accordion at home and credit it with making music theory finally "click" for me. On my fiddle I can play in keys of G,D,A (and the relative minors) quite easily but struggle on weirder keys and can't handle chords at all. On the accordion it couldn't be easier!
I can see some real advantages to this layout. There are only two key shapes rather than twelve, so transposing at sight would become much easier. A printed stave would span sixteen semitones rather than thirteen. The hand positions for chords and scales look about as comfortable as a normal piano.
I thought this keyboard layout might make the pianist's hand-span one tone wider, but unfortunately, that wouldn't be the case. A normal piano spaces its black keys further apart than its white keys. On my digital piano, an isomorphic layout would bring the raised keys about 4mm closer together, which seems unplayable - but leaving the octave span unchanged would win those 4mm back.
It would be much more difficult to reposition your hands without looking at them, but changing the texture of the white keys and black keys might help.
Pretty out of tune, but funny. Stevie Wonder had a Harpejji, which uses an isomorphic pattern of frets and tapped strings. While not strictly a keyboard, this instrument has been embraced by many keyboard players due to its consistent geometric patterns.
The normal key layout with its irregular (within an octave) gaps allow one to play blind without having press and hear where you are with your fingers. Would be interesting to add braille or similar haptic markers on the keys to compensate for that.
It is an electric instrument played with touch technique: you just fret the note by hammering on it with a finger, like right hand tapping on an electric guitar.
Unlike most electric guitars, the harpejji has a separate pickup for each string. Furthermore, it electrically senses the contact between the string and fret. So any unfretted string is not heard, even if it happens to be vibrating. This gives the instrument superb clarity, like hitting keys on a synthesizer. All the players demonstrating the instrument have good articulation, free of unwanted sounds.
Harpejjis have black and white markings on the fretboard to identify C major scale notes. When you look at a horizontal strip of this (across the strings) it is reminiscent of the isomorphic piano.
Why is it helpful or interesting to have an isomorphic piano?
And what does "isomorphic" even mean here? As a casual piano player and techie, I can guess that it means that each lower key and each upper key are equidistant so that you don't have sometimes alternating raised/lowered (C, C#) and lower/lower (E, F) asymmetry. Is that it?
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 35.2 ms ] threadIt might have some minor advantages, but there are probably also disadvantages: this doesn't help you learn the different modes (minor, dorian, etc.). Instead, they might be hindered by your muscle memory.
So, for comping it can shine, but for normal music, probably a disadvantage. I certainly don't see any advantage that should make everybody switch.
A chromatic button accordion has other compensating advantages but I don’t find either one easier overall. They’re just different. You get better with practice.
Which is to say, it isn't a surprise that music co-evolved with a particular instrument might be difficult on some other one; it's the expected, perfectly normal, perfectly predictable result, and isn't really a criticism of the new instrument. Unless you're willing to equally criticize the conventional instrument for all the music it can't play very well, but then, even so, it's a very symmetric criticism in the end and doesn't amount to much.
I thought this keyboard layout might make the pianist's hand-span one tone wider, but unfortunately, that wouldn't be the case. A normal piano spaces its black keys further apart than its white keys. On my digital piano, an isomorphic layout would bring the raised keys about 4mm closer together, which seems unplayable - but leaving the octave span unchanged would win those 4mm back.
It would be much more difficult to reposition your hands without looking at them, but changing the texture of the white keys and black keys might help.
It's a stringed instrument with numerous strings that are uniformly spaced a whole tone apart. It also has numerous frets. So you play on a grid.
There are numerous videos of various people making amazing performances on the harpejji.
They caught the attention of Stevie Wonder, who uses them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpejji
It is an electric instrument played with touch technique: you just fret the note by hammering on it with a finger, like right hand tapping on an electric guitar.
Unlike most electric guitars, the harpejji has a separate pickup for each string. Furthermore, it electrically senses the contact between the string and fret. So any unfretted string is not heard, even if it happens to be vibrating. This gives the instrument superb clarity, like hitting keys on a synthesizer. All the players demonstrating the instrument have good articulation, free of unwanted sounds.
Harpejjis have black and white markings on the fretboard to identify C major scale notes. When you look at a horizontal strip of this (across the strings) it is reminiscent of the isomorphic piano.
Why is it helpful or interesting to have an isomorphic piano?
And what does "isomorphic" even mean here? As a casual piano player and techie, I can guess that it means that each lower key and each upper key are equidistant so that you don't have sometimes alternating raised/lowered (C, C#) and lower/lower (E, F) asymmetry. Is that it?