Keyboard

“ Before notation existed,—before keyboards were invented,—people sang. Before a child knows anything of notation or a keyboard, it sings. It is following its natural, musical instinct. Notation and keyboards are simply symbols of music—cages in which the beautiful bird is caught. They are not music any more than the alphabet is literature. Unfortunately, our system of musical symbols and the keyboard itself are very complex. For the young child it is as difficult as are Calculus and Algebra for his older brother. ”

“ The portable keyboard composes a unit, which corresponds with a group of twenty-eight keys, viz., the three front rows of the standard keyboard, namely, the first nine keys in each of the first two rows and ten keys in the third row. The small characters in the fourth bank of the standard keyboard in said application are given third-shift positions in the rear bank of the portable keyboard.
Variations may be resorted to within the scope of the invention, and positions of the improvements may be used without others. ”

“ Ask permission to examine as many different makes as you can find; try what each will do; make up your mind whether you prefer the single or the double keyboard. If you choose a machine with the single keyboard, you must get used to the shift-key system of printing capitals, yet many writers prefer the single keyboard. If you are buying a machine the makers will gladly substitute for one of the needless characters already on the keyboard—such as @—an odd character for which a writer of photoplays or of fiction would have particular use, such as the exclamation mark. ”

“ In a unique specimen with two keyboards dating from the 16th or 17th century, which is in the collection of Baron Alexandre Kraus,3 what appear to be vibrating strings stretched over a soundboard perpendicular to the keyboard are in reality the wires forming part of the mechanism of the action. The arrangement of this mechanism is the distinctive feature of the clavicytherium, for the wires, unlike the strings of the upright spinet, increase in length from left to right, so that the upright harp-shaped back has its higher side over the treble of the keyboard instead of over the bass. ”

“ Next a “key word” is chosen—and herein lie the cleverness and the simplicity of this cipher, because every time the key word is changed, the whole pattern of the alphabet is changed. Suppose the key word is Gardenia. It is now spelled out in the squares:
The second A is left out, as there must not, of course, be duplicates on the keyboard. Now the rest of the alphabet is written into the squares in their regular sequence:
That is the complete keyboard. ”

“ The early history of the clavichord previous to the 15th century, together with that of the chromatic keyboard—a formal division at the very foundation of modern music—rest in profound obscurity. We are still free to regard our keyboard as an invention sprung complete from the brain of some one mediæval musician, or as the result of gradual contrivances due to the increasing requirements of many. ”

“ On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on both sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. ”

“ The invention of the keyboard with balanced keys has been placed by some writers as late as the 13th or 14th century, in spite of its having been described by both Hero of Alexandria and Vitruvius and mentioned by poets and writers. The misconception probably arose from the easy assumption that the organ was the product of Western skill and that the primitive instruments with sliders found in 11th century documents [4] represent the sum of the progress made in the evolution ”

“ The Monotype keyboard, being an entirely separate machine, may be and usually is operated in any place away from the casting apparatus and work may be executed on it anytime before casting. The perforated roll may be fed through any number of times to produce duplicate castings of the matter, and a matrix-plate for a different face may be used if desired. In the casting of the line the proper spaces are cast with it, the spacing needed to justify each line being indicated on the perforated record during composition on the keyboard. ”

“ The keyboard of a piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr Cyril Scott uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward Elgar an orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as a page of Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years, finger the flute fluently. Another will take up a flute with a newly invented arrangement of keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a mistake. ”

“ At the commencement of the period of which we are treating, the stops belonging to the Swell organ could be drawn on that keyboard only; similarly the stops on the Great, Choir and Pedal organs could be drawn only on their respective keyboards. It is now becoming more and more common to arrange for the transference of stops from one keyboard to another. ”

“ The Transpositeur being an independent false keyboard can be applied to any pianoforte by any maker. It has therefore the great merits of adaptability and convenience. It can be placed upon the proper keyboard of an instrument, and by touching a spring to the right hand of the player and a button which permits the keyboard to be shifted through all the semitones of an octave, the transposition desired is effected. ”

“ When he of the luminous arm steps from the cabinet into the dark room no part of him is visible save the arm. He picks the strings of the instrument with the illuminated hand and fingers the keyboard with the other. He makes a sound of writing on the tablet and tears off a leaf which he conceals, and, drawing a long black stocking over the luminous arm, places in the pocket of the sitter a communication that has been written upstairs in a good light. ”

“ The narrow box should be placed about where you think the keyboard belongs. (See Diagram Six, F, page 179, for making a piano from two boxes.) The music-rest is a bit of folded box rim glued to the central part of the piano above the keyboard. The keyboard is marked off with ink upon a strip of white paper and pasted upon the top of the narrow box. You can easily draw the first part of some music that you know, and place it on a tiny sheet of white paper to make a “piece” for the piano’s music-rest.
A mantel for the living-room may be made from a flat letter-paper box. ”

“ Backed up by a bass player and a percussionist, the smooth, sophisticated Short sits behind the keyboard in a tuxedo, performing popular songs from the early 20th century to the present day. Every word and every note comes out a finely polished jewel, leaving the audience with the impression that they have never heard the song before. ”

“ Every key on the keyboard has a corresponding pallet in the wind-chest, and every stop-knob operates a slider under the pipes, so that both a slider must be drawn and a pallet depressed before any sound can be got from the pipes. ”

“ The influence of the keyboard upon the development of modern music is as conspicuous as it has been important. To this day C major is 'natural' on the keys, as it is in the corresponding notation. Other scales are formed by substituting accidental sharps or flats for naturals both in notation and on the keyed instrument, a fact which is evidence of the common origin and early growth together of the two. ”

“ The apparatus comprises two units, a keyboard transmitter, and a printer, which are mounted on one base to form a very compact combined sending and receiving instrument. The keyboard is arranged as for a standard typewriter, and is a direct-sending instrument the keys of which when operated allow a camshaft to revolve opening and closing the line circuit according to the 5-unit code. Starting and stopping impulses are sent over the line to start and stop the selecting mechanism of the printer so that from transmission point of view the system has actually a 7-unit code. ”

“ The main objects of the invention are to devise a keyboard which conduces to ease of learning and rapidity of operation, and which is systematically organized, and in which the labor is divided about evenly between the right and left hands, and also appropriately divided among the fingers of each hand, and in which the dakuon mark is typed by one hand and the root character by the other hand in a machine in which the other desiderata are secured. ”

“ The new breed of managers, of course, may feel at home on the keyboard from day one. Some colleges even now require students to buy computers, many of which they’ll almost certainly use for word processing. What’s more, as you’ll read in Chapter 11, executive keyboards can ease the transition in the future to telecommuting. ”

“ Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of Beethoven’s sonatas from acrobats who vie with each other in the rapidity of their prestos, or the staying power of their left wrists. ”

“ Either choice was supported by the ANSI computer keyboard standard, X4.14-1971, which referred to the alternatives as `logical bit pairing' and `typewriter pairing'. These alternatives became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical -- and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. ”

“ The more time you spend at a keyboard, the more likely you‘ll end up with the right one. Test keyboards thoroughly. If you‘re buying several dozen, you or a staffer might spend a good three or four hours with the machine you’re about to purchase. A difference of just 10 percent or so in the number of keystrokes per hour per operator could mean thousands of dollars annually to your business.
Even if you’re buying a machine just for your own use, you should still put in a good half hour checking out the keyboard. That’s true with any computer. ”

“ In the accompanying drawings, Figure 1 is a diagrammatic plan of a three-bank katakana keyboard for the Underwood Portable typewriter.
Figure 2 is a plan of the keyboard for a standard 4-bank Underwood typewriter. It will be understood, however, that the invention is also applicable to machines of other makes. ”

“ The advantage Herr von Jankó claims for his keyboard is a freer use of the fingers than is possible with the accepted keyboard, as the player has the choice of three double rows of keys. The longer fingers touch the higher and the shorter the lower keys, an arrangement of special importance for the thumb, which, unlike the latest practice in piano technique, takes its natural position always. All scales, major and minor, can be played with the same positions of the fingers ”

“ Well-controlled hands, fingers, wrists and arms, with excellent manipulation of the keyboard, may be admired at the recital, but little of that effective playing is heard which finds its way to the hearer's heart. A dead monotony will too often recall the letter that killeth because devoid of the spirit that giveth life. ”

“ The advantages of the Monotype are easily seen. In order to save money a man need not possess the complete apparatus. If he has the keyboard only he becomes to a certain extent his own compositor, able to set up the type, as it were by proxy, at any convenient time. He can give his undivided attention to the keyboard, stop work whenever he likes without keeping a casting-machine idle, and as soon as his roll is complete forward it to a central establishment where type is set. There a single man can superintend the completion of half-a-dozen men’s labours at the keyboard. ”

“ The eighteen keys drawn in one diagram bear names, beginning at the left, D, C, B, A, G, F, F♯, E, D, C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C, B; De Caus states that only half the keyboard is given for want of space; the compass, therefore, probably was as shown, with a few accidentals. ”

“ In giving a musical, bear in mind that the player is to be the centre on which all eyes are focussed. If the piano is a grand, place it so that its right side will be toward the audience, but running a little obliquely, so that the keyboard will be visible, or partly so, to those on the right side of the room. The position of a square or an upright should be similar, but you may with advantage turn an upright so that the keyboard is more in view. If the room is very large, you may raise the lid of a grand half-way. ”

“ The other solution depends upon the employment of apparatus which are in effect combinations of type-setting and type-casting machines, and may be divided into two broad classes: (a) those in which, by the operation of a keyboard, letters are translated into metal types which appear as a product for use in the printing-press, not singly, but cast into complete bars or lines of type ”