Musical keyboard

The musical keyboard, also known as the piano keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers on a musical instrument which produce notes.

Related Topics:
Musical instrument - Note

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Many musical instruments which have a key for each note layed out as a piano keyboard (shown in the graphic), include: the piano, harpsichord, clavichord, organ, synthesizer, celesta, accordion, melodica, glasschord, and carillon. Also, instruments such as the xylophone, marimba, vibraphone & glockenspiel have a separate sounding tone bar for each note layed out in a piano keyboard pattern.

Related Topics:
Musical instruments - Piano - Harpsichord - Clavichord - Organ - Synthesizer - Celesta - Accordion - Melodica - Glasschord - Carillon - Xylophone

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The twelve notes of the Western musical scale are laid out with the lowest note on the left; the seven larger keys (for the "natural" notes of the C major scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B) jut forward, with the sharp and flat keys less prominent. The pattern then repeats at the interval of an octave. In a properly-designed keyboard, the natural keys are of uniform width at the front; all keys are of uniform width at the back. Some inexpensive or toy keyboards may not have this feature.

Related Topics:
Musical scale - Scale - Sharp - Flat - Octave

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The arrangement of white keys with intervening, shorter black keys representing intermediate half-steps(semitones) dates to the 15th century. In the following centuries many improvements were made, including a gradually increasing chromatic compass which reached five octaves in the 18th century, and attained the current 88-key range for the modern piano shortly after 1870. Some modern pianos have even more notes (Bösendorfer 225 has 92 and Bösendorfer 290 "Imperial" has 97 keys), and modern synthesizer keyboards commonly have either 61, 76 or 88 keys. Organs normally have 61 keys per manual, though some spinet models have 44 or 49. An organ pedalboard, a keyboard the organist plays with their feet, may vary in size from 12 to 32 notes.

Related Topics:
15th century - 18th century - Pedalboard

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Design limitations of the piano keyboard have been

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addressed by improved keyboard systems. See the

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Janko keyboard and the chromatic keyboard systems on the Accordion keyboard page.

Related Topics:
Janko keyboard - Accordion

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