[sdiy] Re: [AH] Where to get special white keys?

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Ingo Debus <igg.debus at t-online.de> wrote:
>
>Am 26.02.2009 um 11:41 schrieb cheater cheater:
>
>> Besides, hexagonal layouts are sooo yesteryear.... ;)
>
>Yesteryear? Aren't button accordions much older? ;-)
>
>It seems to me that a button accordion is more ergonomic to play than  
>a piano-style accordion. The great accordion virtuosos, like Jean- 
>Louis Matinier or Richard Galliano play button accordions, and if you  
>watch them playing it seems impossible to do the same on a piano- 
>style keyboard.

Years ago I remember seeing a TV show (probably PBS) in which some children were
shown performing on a piano with a very different keyboard.  I've never seen it
since, but it looked more like a really long computer keyboard than anything else. 

When any key was pressed down, you could see that 3 or 4 keys were mechanically
linked together (these other keys went down as well) in a reasonably small local
area (perhaps twice the size of a hand).  According to the narrator, it was both
more ergonomic for the human hand and it was easier to remember scale patterns
because of the lack of an odd pattern of keys that made some scales more difficult
than others.  It looked to me as if one could transpose music by N semitones simply
by moving one's hands to the left or right N key positions.  The key buttons looked
slightly larger than typewriter keys and were arranged in 4 or 5 rows skewed like a
typewriter.

I have no idea if this ever went anywhere nor what it was called.

-- ScottG
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-- Scott Gravenhorst
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