The Chromatone

The piano, is in many ways unintuitive. The fact that the arrangement of the keys is not in consistent intervals makes it a harder instrument to play. What do I mean? I am speaking of the fact that there are black and white keys. If you were to play all the white keys in a row from C, the intervals would not be consistent: it would be whole step, whole step, half step, whole step...etc.

This makes it fairly difficult to transpose songs into different keys. If I wanted to play a song so that it is easier to sing, I might need to lower or raise the key of the song. Doing so involves shifting all of the notes up or down a certain amount. But since the keys on a piano are arranged irregularly, shifting notes becomes more difficult to do.

The Chromatone is a new piano design, in which the keys are arranged in equal distance. It's not just a flat keyboard though: there are 5 sets of keys that are arranged on top of each other. Take a look, it's quite interesting:

Piano Stairs

Today's entry is actually a part of an ad campaign by volkswagen. It's fairly self-explanatory, so I'll just post it here. It's basically a set of stairs that have been refitted to mimic the piano keyboard, and it produces the sound that corresponds to that key:



From the perspectives of urban planning, marketing and other angles, it's definitely a cool concept. From the perspective of a musician, it makes me wonder how we can better integrate musical creation - as opposed to listening - in every day life. It would be neat if there was some simple way to create music with the people around you, easily and in a fun way. Hmmmm..