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Why hadn’t it occurred to me to turn the keyboard around until today!
Today a revelation occurred.
I’ve been rummaging through the pile of synths in my attic, in search of keyboards to prod. A week or so ago I pulled down my Korg Poly800. It was dead. It lit up briefly in a flicker, then died and is still dead. I took the covers off and can’t see any reason for the failure — the power rail is present throughout, where expected, yet it’s lifeless. Oh well.
I put it back up and took down a Roland PC-160 I’d bought in the mid 90s. It was interesting that I’d never been aware of how many keys it didn’t have (only 2 and a bit octaves). It works nicely, but takes up too much room and gives too little.
Then I took down a thing I’d only considered to be a toy that I’d hung on to since the late 80s, the Yamaha SHS-10 with mini-sized keys. I fired it up today, and it works, into Logic Pro X, via a Roland midi interface.
The thing is, I instinctively held it like I hold my guitar and inadvertently put the strap on such that I held the ‘neck’ in my right hand so that the ‘strings’ are hit by my left hand, except it’s a keyboard. Of course, this isn’t the way round that it’s designed to be held, but in all the time I’ve had it, even though the strap stayed on, I’d never actually put it on. I’d only ever placed it on a lap or table and played it that way for a while.
Accidentally putting it on as if it were my guitar was a revelation. The black keys were now nearest me, the lower frequency keys are up the top toward the right hand side and the higher frequency keys are down toward the left hand end. It worked! I mean, of course the thing worked, but today it dawned on me that I should be using the keyboard that way up. It suddenly made so much sense.
I tried playing a melody in my head, and for the first time ever, found the rough keys to press on the keyboard and followed the melody on the keys (kind of, not dead-on, but at least it was in the correct direction — a note that should be higher than preceding one actually came out higher than the preceding, and so on). This is contrary to my experience with keyboards, where the prodding of keys involves nearly random and mostly incorrect guesses of which physical placement the following note should be aimed at.
Brilliant. I’m 55 next week, had even endured torturous piano hating lessons when I was young, but had never occurred to me to turn the keyboard round and play it facing away from me instead of toward me.
So I nipped out into central London, to Rock Stop near Denmark Street, and effected the purchase of a new Keith McMillen K-Board. I plugged it into my MacBook, then my iPad 2, then my Mac Mini. It’s interesting, if I position it so that the white keys are farthest away and the blue keys are nearer me, I can actually guess a lot more accurately which direction the subsequent key should be to correspond with whether the following note is higher or lower frequency than the preceding one.
It’s almost as though there’s an instinctive correlation at work here, now. Of course, there’s ages of latent ‘knowing’ which direction to guess in, for a conventionally held keyboard, but really, now that I’ve turned the keyboard round, it’s far more natural (if I can overcome the existing knowledge as muscle memory).
Comments
Curious...must try...
Indeed!
Wait a minute....
@u0421793 nice blog their Guvnor. Specially the 'nipping out in Central London' as one does. Beyond the musical information/thoughts, I was also struck by It works nicely, but takes up too much room and gives too little. I have divorce papers and pink slips which essentially say the same thing...
Skip to 2:20:
Ah, denmark street. Fond memories. Is that lovely cafe still on charing cross road 1664 i think its called?
Happy birthday for next week.
I had a similar upheaval of conventions last year when I started learning to play the harp, not the harmonica, but the numerously strung and angelically associated instrument.
A year on and things are quite a bit better. 
I've played the guitar for many years, and played at the keyboard occasionally. On the guitar, Right thumb always = low notes, and left pinky always controls high notes.
But, not on the harp. So, creating my usual chord structures, picking patterns, and low to high arpeggios was bewildering at first.
Now, I just need to practice more.
To be honest, I'm a little jealous (and happy for you). I haven't looked at a standard keyboard anew since... forever. Being able to just flip it and find it something totally new yet approachable/inspiring sounds dreamy. Whenever I've tried anything like this, I can not make my mind let go of "left==lower notes". On both keyboard and lefty guitar, that's the way it is and after (shhhhhh) years, I've never been able to flip it. I think Keith Emerson is a total wanker but that he can (could?) undo decades of "left==lower" training and pull of Bach has always been a mental marvel to me.
I do quite enjoy playing instruments that do it totally differently like a Kalimba/Mbira which has it's lowest note in the center and builds up in notes outward back and forth from there (like: 5 3 1 0 2 4 6). I also have no cognitive problem playing something like Thumbjam or a hammered dulcimer vertically but as I type this I realize that most of these examples have no 'wrong' notes so happy accidents arise regardless.
Thanks,
Everything about Denmark street has changed. The Crossrail project has torn up central London since the last couple of years and sucked the soul out by now. There’s virtually nothing in London worth going there for anymore, everything’s gone. Denmark St is a surviving exception, but it’s been remodelled around it drastically. Tottenham Court Road tube station area is a huge building site, and at the moment, it’s northern line only, the central line hasn’t stopped there all year, due to Crossrail works. The surrounding area is unrecognisable. I should take some photos (it was too dark when I got there yesterday — it was 3:45pm after all). Oxford Street has become no more compelling than any big town or city — the same collection of identical chain shops. Tottenham Court Road itself has undergone a lot of remodelling. A few years ago everything went bust and moved out, and now it’s seeing growth, but mainly in terms of poncy coffee eateries alfresco in the freezing rain. Hardly any gear shops, and certainly no more electrical surplus shops like there were decades ago. Seriously, there’s almost nothing worth going into central London for any more. Denmark St is the happy exception, and only some of those shops survived the recession and the lack of footfall from the Crossrail destruction beyond recognition.
Yamaha KX-5 Keytar does that for me. Plus its ribbon controller for pitch bend lies and plays perfectly. Fortuately for me, I got mine very early on, in my instant GAS life of the mid-80's, and Guitar Center just had it on the floor as a reduced price unboxed item. Placed where I had to fall over it. They sold me my MonoPoly that way too. $300. New but floor model. GC used to have it down.
Old surplus shops. For me that was the 60s down Lisle St, in the Totty Ct Rd / Oxford St area. Alternating bags of diodes for a quid and porn shops with excellent SciFi corners. Honestly, I only went in them for the SF. Really.
Or use it in portrait mode (ThumbJam style)!
I’ve tried a few iPad apps upside down with reasonable success (apart from not being able to read what’s said on it). Thumbjam and gestrument spring to mind, the latter particularly as both axes are reversed making them seem more intuitive, or if that’s not really the correct word, at least ‘expected’. I shall have to compose a list of iPad apps that work better for me when upside down (apart from not being able to read what’s said on it).
porn shops with scifi corners.... nostalgia comes in so many different packets....
Yep, right handed bias bites again? I've never understood how someone who plays guitar lefty could play a piano with the opposite note direction.
Every single software keyboard should be reversible for this very reason! It isn't like any of the keys have to be redesigned as they are symmetrical in either direction. It has to be crazy simple to enable it too because of that symmetry.
My personal issue is that not being a trained piano player in any way, but being a serious guitarist, I severely dislike the fact that the black keys are short and distinct from the other tones. Not only does it give an annoying "C major diatonic" bias to the world, but to a guitar player, I know the general notion is that every tone exists (in theory) as an equal division of an "octave", so I have a difficult time understanding this "special treatment", but realize that it is likely essential for super high level classical performers to easily move through musical space with their eyes closed without errors, which is super risky and difficult for a guitarist to do, even with years of training.
But for me, a massively enjoyable development when it occurred were the keyboards in Animoog and Thumbjam. More so Animoog than Thumbjam as it still maintains the white/black key visuals while treating every key equally.
Animoog makes each black key the same length/size as every white key, and keeps them at a reasonable size on the screen, while slightly shifting the black key, unlike Thumjam's full screen thing, which is kind of overkill. The problem with it is that as a midi controller it has max 4-tone polyphony.
So, looks like I have to run but I will come back to fill this out further, and maybe devote a new thread to it, but long story short:
We need reversible keyboards (tones able to be played in reverse orientation highest to lowest left to right, instead of customary lowest to highest left to right, and we need keys of equal length in a row treated equally, unless of course you think micro micro keys are somehoe playable in a classical sense on the small space usually given by an app to a keyboard on an iPad air.
And if the sonosaurus stops by, please give us a standard piano option for key colors. I see you have a 5th based view on the scale, but after years of trying, I can't relate to it whatsoever.
I think the PPG apps have a setting to reverse the keys, lefty-style.
Brilliant idea to reverse a keyboard! Cool! And, mention of a kalimba reminds me how sortof similar it is to SoundPrism. I might need a keytar type instrument for messing around.
Then, reversing it and playing right handed would be like the harp.
Hey, Couldn't a keyboard reversal be done with a midi remapping program like midiflow or something?
Oh Man! Now really all it woul' take is the mirror gesture camera sequencer from @colorband & some kind of (@johnnygoodyear)
&
@midisiri.
I haven't got a clue what I'm supposed to do BUT I DANGLE MY FEET OFF THE EDGE OF THE BED TO SHOW THE MONSTERS I'M WILLING.
(I know I've mentioned this previously, but it bears repeating...)
We'll show it t'thm yes.
Yep, and another revelation — the pitchbend control. Now that it is over there, it can, you know, actually be used at the same time as a note is being played!