On the keyboard/piano

Wallengard

Wallengard

Manipulator of energy
So I've been wondering.. why are there no black keys between B and C, and E and F? The only sensible thing I can think of is for convenience. That it's easier to spot where a certain note is. But wouldn't it be enough if there was just 1 space somewhere?
 
7 notes names A-B-C-D-E-F-G
7 sharp versions A#-B#-C#-D#-E#-F#-G#
7 flat versions Ab-Bb-Cb-Db-Eb-Fb-Gb

When lining up these notes some overlap was found - in just intonation each note is different in equal temperament some notes are given the same equivalent position in the hierarchy of notes

At all points in history, except the late 19th and 20th centuries, a 22 key per octave keyboard (21 notes plus a repeated octave note) was considered too cumbersome to use, so a reduced keyboard of 13 keys was preferred (some early keyboards only had 8 keys per octave)

Just intonation sequence: A-Bb-A#-Cb-B-C-B#-Db-C#-D-Eb-D#-Fb-E-F-E#-Gb-F#-G-Ab-G#

Equal Temperament:
G#A#B#C#D#E#F#G#
AbBbCbDbEbFbGbAb
ABCDEFG

looking at the second table we can see that there are 7 main note positions and 5 intervening notes - this pattern was also observed for the just intonation tuning scheme (reducing the number of keys required to 13 per octave) and applied to keyboards in preference to the larger potential scheme.
 
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As much as I appreciate your effort in explaining to me in what seems to be great detail, it went quite quickly over my head.
 
I understand that for every natural note there is a sharp and a flat note as well. And yes I understand that by simply adding black notes on the keyboard wouldn't make any sense. But you could technically add 2 black notes and remove 2 white from the scale? This is what I don't understand.

As for bandcoach I fail to see this pattern you talk about. The 7 main note and 5 intervening ones. Up until that it's pretty clear.

I'd like to add that my skills in music theory is at a novice level at best. I borrowed a copy of the Music Theory for Computer Musicians at my local library and I have read through it. But I will have to read it several times again and make sure I understand the chapters fully.
 
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firstly - your prior correspondent was spam-o-matic'd out of fp - he is a known serial marketing scammer and was dealt with according to the terms of use, which means all traces of his postings are scrubbed from the database and any threads which he created are wiped out as well.

to your issues about the pattern:

if we lay out the notes as per the sequence of flats to sharp we see that some notes lie between the natural

A-Bb-A#-Cb-B-C-B#-Db-C#-D-Eb-D#-Fb-E-F-E#-Gb-F#-G-Ab-G#

the order is as it is because the # versions of notes are slightly sharper than the similarly located b versions of the notes

- in spite of this inequality of pitch/tuning, the thinking is that these notes are essentially equivalent, e.g, C#=Db and so on; this means that instead of 21 notes as shown we get a reduced set of 16 notes:

A-A#/Bb-B-Cb-B#-C-C#/Db-D-D#/Eb-E-Fb-E#-F-F#/Gb-G-G#/Ab

examining this set we see that some notes still must overlap and when we look at the fundamental frequency of these notes the following near equivalents are noticed

B = Cb
B# = C
E = Fb
E# = F

giving us the new set of notes:

AA#
Bb
B
Cb		B#
C		C#
Db		D
D#
Eb		E
Fb		E#
F		F#
Gb		GG#
Ab

a total of 12 notes

the white key notes are the natural notes A-B/Cb-B#/C-D-E/Fb-E#/F-G - a total of 7 notes

the black key notes are the remaining pairs A#/Bb-C#/Db-D#/Eb-F#/Gb-G#/Ab - a total of 5 notes

rearranging so that we start on C

B
L
A
C
K		C#
Db		D#
Eb		F#
Gb		G#
Ab		A#
Bb
W
H
I
T
E		C
B#		DE
Fb		F
E#		GAB
Cb		C
 
So basically, if I understood this somewhat correctly (I will read through this some more to get a grip on it) is that some notes need to overlap like this because all notes couldn't otherwise have a flat and a sharp version, as well as the natural note? And/or because the white keys would not be the natural key?

Yeah I was wondering where that post went, but not anymore.

I feel kind of dumb not figuring this out. Seems it's right there in front of me!
 
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