The piano is the worst invention ever. Discuss.

[Mark Schmieder]

Some people just can't restrain themselves from re-inventing the wheel. Click to see the full images; especially the initial one that charts the Italian designer's justification for why the piano keyboard is the dumbest invention ever and how his new concept will result in much better players.

[Mark Schmieder]

Part Two of the History of Why Pianos Suck.

[Mark Schmieder]

The Proposed Modern Ergonomic Piano Keybed Design.

[Mark Schmieder]

[ We can't post more than one image at a time, it seems ]

[Mighty Motif Max]

Too glossy of a finish! With things being that rounded you'd probably slip around, especially when it's hot out.

[Tom Fiala]

Reminds me of Salvadore Dali's melted watches!

[ElmerJFudd]

[video:youtube]

 

This site has 9 subscribers.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCpNnEXxYbtU6S5uwaasSUQ/featured

[jeffincltnc]

Does it have aftertouch?

[Docbop]

Good luck with changing more than a handful of people. People have been trying to change the typewriter/computer keyboard for ages, but only a handful of people use alternative keyboards. And everyone knows the QWERTY typewriter keyboard was designed to slow down the typist, because the early mechanical typewriter would jam all the time, so they slowed the typist. This will end up being the same even if that new design is considered better people aren't going to change, as much as they deny it people don't like change.

[MathOfInsects]

Maybe it's COVID-brain, but I think that Dali-like keyboard looks intriguing and I'd be interested in trying it out.

 

I actually start most of my students with a little spiel on how the piano represents terrible industrial design for its end-use, right down to the default-to-C distribution of large and small keys of different colors and sizes, when there is no actual difference between the set of notes between C and C and those between the confusingly named C# and C#, musically speaking.

[drawback]

Too glossy of a finish! With things being that rounded you'd probably slip around, especially when it's hot out.

 

My skin splits beside each fingernail just by my looking at it.

[skipeb3]

There was a keyboard design that I read about years ago in Keyboard Mag. Not for piano, but for synths. Each key had 3 positions⦠You would depress the key in it"s neutral position and play the note normally, and then the key could slide toward you or away from you, and you could raise or lower the pitch of that note. With each key being able to work in that manner, you could do all sorts of movements, similar in theory to how a pedal steel guitar is able to alter pitches within a chord.

I also remember that the keys had some sort of surface that allowed you to have some grip on them so it would work easily.

 

The limitations of synths at the time (mid "80"s) couldn"t have handled it, so it never came to fruition.

But I wonder what about now?

[mate stubb]

The limitations of synths at the time (mid "80"s) couldn"t have handled it, so it never came to fruition.

But I wonder what about now?

 

Expressive E Osmose. Haaken Continuum.

[mate stubb]

BTW, I consider the piano the greatest invention ever. Except for the Hammond organ. Its arcane and non symmetrical user interface has provided me with a career as a keyboard practitioner, a fairly rare skill set.

 

Imagine if hordes of people could learn to play a keyboard as easily as one can play guitar - the horrors!!

[skipeb3]

Wow... never knew about those.

Thanks...

[Tom Williams]

That wiggly one gave me motion sickness, a neat trick in a still picture. Regarding the Golden ratio and fractal design of the human hand, pure bovine excrement.

 

I agree with the QWERTY analogy. All my life I have seen announcements of alternative keyboards, including four close-set rows of short keys, whole steps in each row, offset by half-steps on alternate rows -- the Janko keyboard, probably the most rational design of all. Like the Dvorak typewriter, it ticked all the boxes but never caught on.

 

Heck, I can't even convince myself to try out my buddy's Roli....

[KuruPrionz]

Mankind's greatest invention is hot running water.

 

The piano has it's quirks, it is not perfect but it is far from being the worst invention. Anything that humans can play music on is good, even accordions and banjos.

 

Lutefisk and balut are bad.

 

IPA (at least the way the micro-breweries make it) is bad, but it isn't really IPA.

 

8 track players are bad.

 

Carburators are bad.

 

Things that are easy to take apart but won't go back together again are bad.

 

Midrange horns that crossover at 800 hz are bad and sound like murdering geese.

 

Deep fried Snickers bars are bad.

[ElmerJFudd]

There was a guy pushing the Janko keyboard while back,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jankó_keyboard

 

Rudess is big on that Geo Synth Interface used on iPad touch screens.

[video:youtube]

 

It"s a big world, there"s room for it all.

 

That said, the piano keyboard doesn"t seem to have held the humans back all that much.

 

[video:youtube]

[SamuelBLupowitz]

The answer is obvious: adjust the size ratios of the keyboard so that they are more suited to the human hand. Then, make the keys light up pretty colors when you play them. A sound artistic and financial move if I've ever heard one! :wink:

 

I too don't see the piano keyboard going anywhere in the coming century, but I'm always on board for a nice "yes-and" to the typical.

[Dockeys]

The Proposed Modern Ergonomic Piano Keybed Design.

 

All my keyboards look like this after I have a few beers....

[TommyBoy]

"The piano is the worst invention ever. Discuss."

 

I play the accordion. So....

[Goodbyee]

The limitations of synths at the time (mid "80"s) couldn"t have handled it, so it never came to fruition.

But I wonder what about now?

 

Expressive E Osmose. Haaken Continuum.

 

I think you can get medication for that now though......

[El Lobo]

see the Roli Seaboard

[Tom Williams]

Mankind's greatest invention is hot running water.

I'd nominate Cooked Meat

8 track players are bad.

But they used to be nice, at least before cassettes got going.

Midrange horns that crossover at 800 hz are bad and sound like murdering geese.

Uh-oh. You've just condemned Leslie speakers. People have been banned for less.

[KuruPrionz]

Mankind's greatest invention is hot running water.

I'd nominate Cooked Meat

 

 

8 track players are bad.

But they used to be nice, at least before cassettes got going.

Midrange horns that crossover at 800 hz are bad and sound like murdering geese.

Uh-oh. You've just condemned Leslie speakers. People have been banned for less.

 

Cooked meat is good but imagine eating it surrounded by people who smell so bad it would make a buzzard puke.

 

Nice is a relative term I suppose. They certainly didn't sound very good and often interrupted songs right in the middle. I used to hate listening to Whos Next and having We Won't Get Fooled Again switch over right in the middle.

 

I submit that Leslies would sound even better if they had swirling midrange cone based speakers and 3 way rotation/speeds for even more swirly whirly.

[El Lobo]

The Proposed Modern Ergonomic Piano Keybed Design.

Friend says "Created for Wavy Gravy?"

[Old No7]

Well, that's one way to "make some waves" in this business...

 

Old No7

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Mankind's greatest invention is hot running water.

 

The piano has it's quirks, it is not perfect but it is far from being the worst invention. Anything that humans can play music on is good, even accordions and banjos.

 

Lutefisk and balut are bad.

 

In one comment you've managed to alienate both Midwesterners and Southerners.

 

No, in all seriousness, lutefisk isn't something I've eaten a lot, but there is one Swedish recipe that I do like. It's not fishy. It's served at an annual Swedish Lutefisk Dinner in Cook, MN. Even people who don't like lutefisk supposedly like theirs.

 

8 track players are bad.

I have one. It can be annoying (partially due to the fact that they were way before my time and I have a hard time figuring out how to run it), but the music still sounds good. And this one has RCA inputs so I can run keyboards into it via a mixer.

[KuruPrionz]

Mankind's greatest invention is hot running water.

 

The piano has it's quirks, it is not perfect but it is far from being the worst invention. Anything that humans can play music on is good, even accordions and banjos.

 

Lutefisk and balut are bad.

 

In one comment you've managed to alienate both Midwesterners and Southerners.

 

No, in all seriousness, lutefisk isn't something I've eaten a lot, but there is one Swedish recipe that I do like. It's not fishy. It's served at an annual Swedish Lutefisk Dinner in Cook, MN. Even people who don't like lutefisk supposedly like theirs.

 

8 track players are bad.

I have one. It can be annoying (partially due to the fact that they were way before my time and I have a hard time figuring out how to run it), but the music still sounds good. And this one has RCA inputs so I can run keyboards into it via a mixer.

 

Dad was born and raised in Minnesota, we used to go visit Grandpa and Grandma on their farm near Mankato. Good times! My brother and I even got to see the Who in Minneapolis on the Tommy tour for $3.50 each.

Mom, Dad and my two sisters went to the opening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid instead.

 

Anyway, lutefisk there, lutefisk somehow in Fresno CA and up here the Norway Hall has a Lutefisk Dinner once a year. Lutefisk is basically a cheese made from fish. Sorry, it smells nasty, looks nasty and doesn't taste good. Back when refrigeration was just something you had to survive every winter, that's how our ancestors managed to keep alive. I understand the relevance and reverance. And, then there is balut, there are variations of that in many Asian countries. it is sort of a cheese made from eggs, buried and left until all microbes have died in their own waste (just like beer). It smells nasty, looks nasty and I don't know how it tastes, maybe it's good. I had a Cambodian girlfriend who liked balut and also liked shrimp paste - which looks nasty, smells nasty and tastes nasty.

 

Very inside joke perhaps but living in Fresno I'd hear white people talking smack about the foods the Asian population there would eat. I would just say "Lutefisk" and the awkward silence would ensue. So that's where my statements come from, all cultures probably have some sort of preserved food that kept them alive long enough to have us as descendents so we own a lot to our ancestors eating muck. But, we don't have to do that anymore, lucky us!!!!

 

I'll grant you that 8 track was not the worst sounding media ever but it was a defective idea from the get go. The 78 record might have sounded pretty ok for back in the day but I've never heard a clean, mint 78 played on a properly restored vintage photograph so I don't think much of them either (exception being historical importance) and DAT stands out to me as being pretty bad too.

 

It seems impossible for anybody to say anything without somebody playing the "offended" card. So it goes, Benny Hill didn't care and neither do I!!!

[xKnuckles]

Great thread. Now I realise that all those wrong notes were not my fault. The pianos are all designed to cause me to hit them. Decades of guilt instantly lifted...

 

As to the greatest human invention: it is obviously chocolate......