Pashkuli Keyboard <[email protected]> writes: > Maybe 18th century to the... Western world. At least 2000 years for > other places around the world.
Shape music? Hardly so. If you choose your own meanings for well-established terms, communication does not happen. > Exercising an instrument is just learning to play. Chromatic is best > matched with chromatic. A chromatically organised access to notes does not imply chromatically organised music. And "best matched" is just hollow words when there is no notion about the purpose of the match. There is very little Western music with a chromatic frame of reference and tonality (the dodecaphonists may be considered an exception but they cannot avoid being usually perceived with the hearing of a diatonically trained listener), so for any musical understanding that does not restrict itself to the _execution_ on a chromatic instrument, chromatic notation is not helpful. For example, transposing music in tablature (execution-based notation for partially chromatically organised string instrument) is sort of a nightmare once you want to do more than slide to a different position on the neck. > Music is not only harmony "thirds" or natural major or minor. Strawman. > Have you heard about Kravtsov accordions: > http://www.accordionkravtsov.ru/eng/ Looks like combining a loose relation of standard music notation to the keyboard with the irregularity of a piano keyboard. Accordions are about the only instruments where uniform chromatic keyboard layouts have made it into mainstream, and the overwhelming reason for that is that it allows to cram a lot of music into confined space. Another may be its low acceptance into classical music where sheet music (which maps better to diatonic keyboard layouts) rather than playing by ear is paramount: in countries with an active folk music tradition, you'll often find band members playing button keyboards while ensembles with a classical repertoire will be more likely seen playing with piano keyboards. There are other uniform chromatic systems, like the related 2-row based Jankó keyboard pianos, or the respective 6+6 or Bayreuther system for accordions. They've not made it into mainstream. -- David Kastrup
