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why the piano?


JimLucas

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Hebrew goes from right to left because it was designed in the hammer-and-chisel days, hammer in right hand.

 

 

Now that's a factoid I have not heard before. What about Japanese? I guess that writing from top to bottom wouldn't smear the ink either.

 

the japanese based their system on the chinese. when you write in chinese, you write "top to bottom, left to write" for each character. traditionally the next word goes underneath, but in the modern world they very often write the next word to the right. either way, you ALWAYS write each character "top to bottom, left to right." so the rule still holds for chinese.

 

interestingly, though, traditionally you never touched your hand to the paper... you kept your hand in the air and balanced a brush beneath. so... who knows why they right to left ever came into play.

Hebrew or Greek is written/read right to left, isn't it? :huh:

Cheers,

Patrick

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Keyboards (piano, harpsichord, clavichord, virginal, organ, etc. ad nausium) are quite common, just about every household has at least some semblance of one, be it grandma's battered and out of tune upright, the baby grand that dominates most of the living room in our house, the electronic keyboard that my friend has, whatever. They're common and easily recognized. They're easy to make noise on. And they are quite visual in showing chords and relations between notes. But that's been said before. I would place a vote in the direction of, most people are familiar with how the piano works, even a little bit, so they assume everything else will operate the same way that makes music.

No the same instrument, but a similar experience happened when my cousin realized, for the first time, that a violin doesn't have frets like a guitar. :rolleyes: He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

 

Chinese writing goes up and down because there are early bamboo books that look sort of like big clunky sushi rolls, with the bamboo split down the grain and tied together with leather strips. The writing is done on the inside of the bamboo, which necessitates up and down writing in columns. Or at least that's the explanation I've heard, and it sounds pretty reasonable to me, looking at the things and thinking how I'd write in them.

 

I can ask around and see what I can pick up on the reasons for writing in different directions. I'm sure there's something to be found in our library in mom's bookbinding information and font books.

 

 

Edited to add a comma....elusive things!

Edited by Fiddlehead Fern
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Keyboards (piano, harpsichord, clavichord, virginal, organ, etc. ad nausium) are quite common, just about every household has at least some semblance of one, be it grandma's battered and out of tune upright, the baby grand that dominates most of the living room in our house, the electronic keyboard that my friend has, whatever. They're common and easily recognized. They're easy to make noise on. And they are quite visual in showing chords and relations between notes. But that's been said before. I would place a vote in the direction of, most people are familiar with how the piano works, even a little bit, so they assume everything else will operate the same way that makes music.

No the same instrument, but a similar experience happened when my cousin realized, for the first time, that a violin doesn't have frets like a guitar. :rolleyes: He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

 

 

Too right there :D ; and... a picture of one? :lol:

Cheers,

Patrick

 

P.S. Talking about pictures, I wonder how many people have pictures of their great-grandfathers who fought in the French trenches in WWI. I do; and he lived through it. I always wonder how much all my male ancestors went through in the World Wars. -_- Lest We Forget (even though I'm a few months late for that.)

Edited by Patrick King
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The right hand got the high notes because frequently that's where the tune is and frequently it has to be louder and it's more twiddly than the other stuff.

 

Sorry Samantha, but that makes no sense to me at all. Can you explain yourself? Supposing someone is left-handed and/or the functions of their hemispheres are reversed (not unknown if you happen to be the left-handed offspring of a left-handed mother)? In terms of having the low notes on the left ascending to high notes on the right, I guess there has to be a system, where the notes are placed in chronological order, either from left to right or from right to left, ascending or descending, to make it easy to make sense of note progression and scales, etc; and since the piano and its musical anticedents were devoloped along those lines to make such an instrument easier to play (imagine if all all the notes/keys on a piano were jumbled up like the letter keys on a typewriter or computer keyboard - yes sure, the brain would get there eventually, but how much more difficult it would be to master to learn to play one), it makes sense to me that, for simplicity's sake, western music notation has been devised and illustrated this way, like our modern western alphabet, starting with the letter A, far left, going up to Z, extreme right. When I decided I'd like to learn to play the concertina, the reason the EC appealed to me over the other two main systems, is because it seemed to be more logical in the way it has been devised/constructed as an instrument. Same note on the pull/push. To play a scale, you alternate, pressing a button on one end and then one on the other end, and so on. My brain got the concept pretty quickly after purchasing an EC, and within minutes, I was able to squeeze out a simple melody, something that has eluded me after a week of trying on an anglo! Obviously, every musical instrument invented, has been designed the way it is and has its quirks and some are easier to master than others. Long live the concertina!

 

Chris

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The right hand got the high notes because frequently that's where the tune is and frequently it has to be louder and it's more twiddly than the other stuff.

Sorry Samantha, but that makes no sense to me at all. Can you explain yourself?

Well, it sounds to me a reasonable guess. Besides the fact that most people are right-handed, remember that in past centuries left-handedness was frowned upon and discouraged. Consider the words "gauche" and "sinister," both of which mean left, but have taken on derogatory meanings as well.

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...Besides the fact that most people are right-handed, remember that in past centuries left-handedness was frowned upon and discouraged...

 

That's probably why, Boney. With the piano, you can play either right or left-hand, and if my memory serves me correctly, my music teacher used to tell me that when studying music, you would have to keep in mind some old rules. Do you think that is another reason why the piano is known-well... maybe. :D

Cheers,

Patrick

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...He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

Too right there :D ; and... a picture of one? :lol:

A picture of a viola da gamba? Try the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

 

...(imagine if all all the notes/keys on a piano were jumbled up like the letter keys on a typewriter or computer keyboard - yes sure, the brain would get there eventually, but how much more difficult it would be to master to learn to play one)

 

...

 

When I decided I'd like to learn to play the concertina, the reason the EC appealed to me over the other two main systems, is because it seemed to be more logical in the way it has been devised/constructed as an instrument.

When I read the first part of that quote, I was thinking "or concertina." Many concertina systems are virtual jumbles, particularly in the minds of folks familiar with other concertina systems. Ever try to pick out a scale on a Maccann? In fact, when I try to describe to non-concertina players the notion of different concertina systems and why somebody who plays one might have trouble playing another, I compare it to a typewriter keyboard with all the letters in different places.

 

[Edited for formatting]

Edited by David Barnert
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...He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

Too right there :D ; and... a picture of one? :lol:

A picture of a viola da gamba? Try the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

 

No, not of a viola da gamba. I meant a picture of a piano, since we were on the subject of them. :) But I guess it's no use of having a picture of a piano if you already have a real-life one.

Edited by Patrick King
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Just to muddle the waters: (from wikipedia

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

 

)

 

Boustrophedon (pronounced /ˌbaʊstrɵˈfiːdən/ or /ˌbuːstroʊˈfiːdən/; from Greek βουστροφηδόν "ox-turning"—that is, turning like oxen in ploughing), is an ancient way of writing manuscripts and other inscriptions. Rather than going from left to right as in modern English, or right to left as in Hebrew and Arabic, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions.

 

ocd

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...He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

Too right there :D ; and... a picture of one? :lol:

A picture of a viola da gamba? Try the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

 

No, not of a viola da gamba. I meant a picture of a piano, since we were on the subject of them. :) But I guess it's no use of having a picture of a piano if you already have a real-life one.

 

Our piano takes up most of the house....no place to put a picture of one! ;)

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...He just figured that since a bunch of string instruments vaguely resembling the violin (if you squint and look from afar) had frets, so did the violin. Well, nope actually. Viola da gamba, yes, but that's different....

Too right there :D ; and... a picture of one? :lol:

A picture of a viola da gamba? Try the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

 

No, not of a viola da gamba. I meant a picture of a piano, since we were on the subject of them. :) But I guess it's no use of having a picture of a piano if you already have a real-life one.

 

Our piano takes up most of the house....no place to put a picture of one! ;)

 

We used to have 2 organs. :D (Does that break the record? ;) )

We sold them and we're thinking of getting a piano, then I'd be able to take piano lessons again; but on the piano, not on the organ. My music teacher, a Nun, says I have a talent for the piano. :D If I do take up the piano again, I'll still be on the concertina also; and on here also. ;)

Edited by Patrick King
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  • 4 weeks later...
The right hand got the high notes because frequently that's where the tune is and frequently it has to be louder and it's more twiddly than the other stuff.

 

Sorry Samantha, but that makes no sense to me at all. Can you explain yourself? Supposing someone is left-handed and/or the functions of their hemispheres are reversed (not unknown if you happen to be the left-handed offspring of a left-handed mother)?

<snip>

Chris

 

Chris,

I see Samantha's point, and I see yours, too!

 

Not the point about the ascending sequence of notes on the keyboards. That's not arbitrary. The simplest stringed instrument we have is the harp, which predates the piano by a long way. Here, the lower strings have to be longer, the higher ones shorter, and the only practicable way is to have two diverging bridges, which gives you your sequence. It's exactly the same with the keyboard stringed instruments.

 

But the harp doesn't have bass left, treble right! It has treble close to you, bass away from you (like an EC!). Either hand could play the bass strings or the treble strings - but in practice, harpers play bass with the left hand, resting the harp on the right shoulder to give the left arm more reach.

Why?

My answer is "handedness". The majority of us are right-handed. This doesn't mean that the right hand is stronger or more skilful than the left. A harper's left hand is just as deft than his right, a rhythm guitarist's even more so.

No, it's because the "master" hand likes to hog the limelight, and the "servant" hand is happy to let it do so. Hogging the limelight in music means taking the melodic lead, so a right-handed harpist would feel most comfortable letting his right hand play the melody in the treble, with the left accompanying in the bass. I could imagine left-handed harpists doing it the other way round - the construction of the instrument would permit this.

Not so the piano. The builder has to decide which of the player's hands is going to get to play lead, and which will accompany. So following the (right-handed) majority of harpists, the treble notes are under the right hand, the bass under the left.

 

The concertina is, of course, completely differernt. It has no strings, and in the English-made concertina, the reeds are placed radially, so any size of reed could be placed anywhere. Here, the arrangement of the buttons is arbitrary! With the concertina, there is also the restraint that the "keyboard" must be as compact as possible, because the hands are not free to move about, as a pianist's or even accordionist's are. The Rust system "piano concertina" never caught on, which shows how impracticable a sequential arrangement of notes on the concertina is.

 

In the final analysis, the two main concertina systems aim for compactness. The German system puts 2 notes on each button, reducing the number of buttons needed by half; and the English system lets each hand play only half the notes. The German system is optimised towards diatonic, harmonised music, the English towards chromatic, melodic music. Being a harmony instrument, the (Anglo-)German concertina to a certain extent retains the division of labour between dominant right hand and servile left hand. The EC knows no master or servant, but lets the hands share the work. The duet systems follow the Anglo's lead in this respect, with a lead hand and a back-up hand, both of which must be equally skilful.

 

That's my take on it, anyway! :rolleyes:

 

Cheers,

John

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The simplest stringed instrument we have is the harp, which predates the piano by a long way. Here, the lower strings have to be longer, the higher ones shorter, and the only practicable way is to have two diverging bridges, which gives you your sequence. It's exactly the same with the keyboard stringed instruments.

 

But the harp doesn't have bass left, treble right! It has treble close to you, bass away from you (like an EC!).

Actually, that's opposite to the English concertina. And even the duets. Though duets have a lower range in the left hand than in the right, in each hand they all have the lower notes closer to the wrists.

 

Either hand could play the bass strings or the treble strings - but in practice, harpers play bass with the left hand, resting the harp on the right shoulder to give the left arm more reach.

That's modern harpers.

 

Irish harpers of the 18th and 19th centuries generally played the treble strings with the left hand and the bass strings wtih the right. (This claim is supported by two images in Armstrong's The Irish and Highland harps. One is an illustration of a harper from the early 1700's, and the other is an early photograph, from about 1840.)

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But the harp doesn't have bass left, treble right! It has treble close to you, bass away from you (like an EC!).

Actually, that's opposite to the English concertina. And even the duets. Though duets have a lower range in the left hand than in the right, in each hand they all have the lower notes closer to the wrists.

 

You're right, of course! You can see I'm not an EC player. :unsure:

However, the point is, the notes on the harp/EC don't ascend from left to right or vice versa, but towards you or away from you.

In fact, the notes on each row of a Crane duet ascend from right to left - but the allocation of the hands is right to melody and left to accompaniment.

 

Either hand could play the bass strings or the treble strings - but in practice, harpers play bass with the left hand, resting the harp on the right shoulder to give the left arm more reach.

 

That's modern harpers.

 

Irish harpers of the 18th and 19th centuries generally played the treble strings with the left hand and the bass strings wtih the right. (This claim is supported by two images in Armstrong's The Irish and Highland harps. One is an illustration of a harper from the early 1700's, and the other is an early photograph, from about 1840.)

Could well be that there were left-handed harpers in those days. In the Renaissance, some people played the recorder left over right, some right over left. Early recorders were made with two offset holes for the lower pinkie - you were supposed to cork the hole you didn't need. Things weren't as reglemented then as they are now. ;)

As a counter-example, the only reproduced painting I've seen of Carolan, harp in hand, shows his right hand on the treble strings.

 

(Just a thought: if a harper is playing a long passage with the melody in the bass and the accompaniment in the treble, does he still play the melody with his right? Theoretically, he could! Any harpers here?)

 

As to early photographs - they often seem to prove the opposite of what was, in fact, the case, because they were printed in mirror-image. Early banjo and guitar photos have an awkward look about them, because the photographers got the musicians to hold their instruments "wrong way round" so that it would look "right" on the print. Works for the guitar, but with the banjo, the 5th-string peg is obviously on the wrong side of the neck (later causing people to think that there were a lot of left-handed banjos played by right-handers in the old days!) So if the photographer didn't think it important which shoulder the harp rested on, he could just have gone ahead and snapped the harper as he usually sat - harp on right shoulder. In mirror image, this doesn't look as glaringly "wrong" as a guitarist with the neck apparently going to his right.

 

On the whole, modern harp practice, with the blades facing the left hand, thus leaving the right hand free to play the main part, tends to suggest that "bass left, treble right" always was the preferred orientation.

 

Cheers,

John

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This is all Greek to me - and I play golf left-handed and tennis right-handed but I am not ambidextrous.

Geoff Crabb had the answer at Bradfield. He repaired a concertina sent from some remote outpost overseas . He sent it back with the bill and the owner came back saying what had the master done to his treasured instrument which he had learnt on his own and which was now unplayable.

In fact it arrived with the handles the 'wrong' way round and Geoff had put them where they were 'supposed' to be - but the owner had never played it that way from the beginning............

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As to early photographs - they often seem to prove the opposite of what was, in fact, the case, because they were printed in mirror-image.

The same applies to earlier illustrations - unless the artist took care to correct the image when he was engraving the original plate, the image would be reversed when printed.

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The right hand got the high notes because frequently that's where the tune is and frequently it has to be louder and it's more twiddly than the other stuff.

 

Sorry Samantha, but that makes no sense to me at all. Can you explain yourself? Supposing someone is left-handed and/or the functions of their hemispheres are reversed (not unknown if you happen to be the left-handed offspring of a left-handed mother)?

<snip>

Chris

 

Chris,

I see Samantha's point, and I see yours, too!

 

Not the point about the ascending sequence of notes on the keyboards. That's not arbitrary. The simplest stringed instrument we have is the harp, which predates the piano by a long way. Here, the lower strings have to be longer, the higher ones shorter, and the only practicable way is to have two diverging bridges, which gives you your sequence. It's exactly the same with the keyboard stringed instruments.

 

But the harp doesn't have bass left, treble right! It has treble close to you, bass away from you (like an EC!). Either hand could play the bass strings or the treble strings - but in practice, harpers play bass with the left hand, resting the harp on the right shoulder to give the left arm more reach.

Why?

My answer is "handedness". The majority of us are right-handed. This doesn't mean that the right hand is stronger or more skilful than the left. A harper's left hand is just as deft than his right, a rhythm guitarist's even more so.

No, it's because the "master" hand likes to hog the limelight, and the "servant" hand is happy to let it do so. Hogging the limelight in music means taking the melodic lead, so a right-handed harpist would feel most comfortable letting his right hand play the melody in the treble, with the left accompanying in the bass. I could imagine left-handed harpists doing it the other way round - the construction of the instrument would permit this.

Not so the piano. The builder has to decide which of the player's hands is going to get to play lead, and which will accompany. So following the (right-handed) majority of harpists, the treble notes are under the right hand, the bass under the left.

 

The concertina is, of course, completely differernt. It has no strings, and in the English-made concertina, the reeds are placed radially, so any size of reed could be placed anywhere. Here, the arrangement of the buttons is arbitrary! With the concertina, there is also the restraint that the "keyboard" must be as compact as possible, because the hands are not free to move about, as a pianist's or even accordionist's are. The Rust system "piano concertina" never caught on, which shows how impracticable a sequential arrangement of notes on the concertina is.

 

In the final analysis, the two main concertina systems aim for compactness. The German system puts 2 notes on each button, reducing the number of buttons needed by half; and the English system lets each hand play only half the notes. The German system is optimised towards diatonic, harmonised music, the English towards chromatic, melodic music. Being a harmony instrument, the (Anglo-)German concertina to a certain extent retains the division of labour between dominant right hand and servile left hand. The EC knows no master or servant, but lets the hands share the work. The duet systems follow the Anglo's lead in this respect, with a lead hand and a back-up hand, both of which must be equally skilful.

 

That's my take on it, anyway! :rolleyes:

 

Cheers,

John

 

that all sounds very reasonable to me. i never thought of it that way...

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