Black keys, White keys

 

One of the first things I do with new students, whether beginner or more advanced, is ask "Why do we have black keys and white keys?" Even if the person has played the piano for years, it is something they just don't seem to have ever thought about, because hardly anyone gets the right answer, at least not right away. 

Here are some of the responses I get (all incorrect):

"The black keys are the sharps and flats." My response: yes that's what we call them, but why do we have them? Why not all white keys?"

"We need the black keys so we can have half steps." My response is to point out that between the keys E and F, and B and C, are also half steps, but on white keys.

"The black keys are the minor keys." This is the most off-base answer of all. The terms major and minor, in music, can refer to an interval (distance between keys), a chord, or a scale. Major and minor always refer to a relationship between tones, never to a single note. There is no such thing as a minor note or a major note. More on this in another post.

"To fit all 88 keys in the space. If they were all white keys the keyboard would be too wide." Although this answer has some merit, it is still not correct.

Do you know the answer? See if you do before reading on.

All you need to do is cover up all the black keys and you will immediately see the reason. Without the black keys, you'd have an expanse of white keys, all looking alike, and you'd never to be able to tell -- visually, that is -- which key was which. If you wanted to place you hand on a specific note, it would be pure guesswork to find it quickly. The arrangement of white keys and black keys is a visual map so we can find our place. I always point out to the student that violins, clarinets, trumpets, and virtually every other instrument, does not have white and black keys, and they use the same notes that piano does (or more precisely, a subset of the notes a piano uses). They have other ways for the player to find a specific note, mostly by "feel." But of couse, all those instruments have far fewer notes to cover, so doing it by feel is possible. For the pianist it would not be possible. (I always like to mention that your voice also doesn't have white and black keys.)

Likewise, if the arrangement of keys were white-black-white-black, like stripes, you'd have the same problem of not being able to tell the keys apart. The very ingenious arrangement of a group of two black keys and a group of three black keys makes every note within the octave look unique. Even if the only note you know is middle C, you found it because of its relationship with the nearest black key.

Clearly, many people have played the piano without ever having consciously thought about this. It's just something we take for granted. But for new students -- and even a few who are not so new -- I find it important to understand this. There are so many misconceptions about the black keys. Some people will say the "sound different" than the white keys. (But if I play a key and they are not looking, they can't tell whether it was a white or black key.) However, all you need to do is look inside the piano (if you have an acoustic piano) and see that every string is hit by a hammer, and there is no way to tell which of those strings correspond to a white key vs. a black key. Some beginning students even get a kind of phobia about the black keys, like they are somehow more difficult to play. So I want the student to understand that our piano keyboard arrangement is purely a visual map, and doesn't have some "deeper" meaning about the tones themselves.

My next post will be about the widespread confusion about the terms "major" and "minor."