
Demonstration of 4-Row Janko Keyboard (1986) [video] - vo2maxer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w
======
jmiskovic
I made an android app that implements isomorphic note layouts. They can be
divided to hexagonal tiling (harmonic table layout, Wicki-Hayden layout,
Janko) and rectangular tiling (bass/violin/mandolin fretboard).

The app does not allow choosing between those layouts, because customization
stands in way of creativity. You can still customize anything by modifying
code and have it interpreted on phone without re-compiling anything. To
recreate Janko, you would modify hexpad.lua and set NE interval to 1 and N
interval to -1. Here's the code
[https://github.com/jmiskovic/hexpress](https://github.com/jmiskovic/hexpress)

The appeal of isomorphic lauyout is that everything you learn (intervals,
scales & modes, chords, progressions, riffs) can be applied across all keys.
Some musical patterns become more obvious and learning becomes less tedious.
Another nice benefit is that such layouts are mostly two-dimensional, so they
make good use of small screens.

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mkl
I have a Chromatone keyboard, with its 6-row Janko layout. The top row is
really part of a chromatic run section at the top (you can just run your
finger along and play all the notes). Looks like they're still giving them
away for shipping only: [https://www.chromatone.jp/online-
shop/en.html](https://www.chromatone.jp/online-shop/en.html)

I wrote a bit about it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668900)

Quoting myself (no real updates since then - too busy with work):

It looks like it has an enormous number of keys, but they are linked together,
with each horizontal position being a note, and 3-4 "buttons" on the same
physical lever for each note. This makes fingerings very flexible. The closer
spacing of the key layout means you can reach bigger chords more easily - I
can comfortably play a 10th, for example. The layout is isomorphic, so
transposing is as simple as shifting your hands along.

I have played (standard) piano for over 30 years, and this was immediately
intuitive for anything melodic. I am far from an expert yet, but the biggest
difficulty has been the lack of colours on the keys, which makes it hard to
jump big intervals, or play the same note in different octaves in both hands.
The lack of colours is because keys don't play a fixed note; the whole
keyboard can be transposed by pressing a couple of buttons. Also, because the
layout is isomorphic and they were trying to get away from the traditional
note system. I am planning to try different colourings with masking tape or
post-its, but I wish it had an RGB led for each key (not sure I can justify
the effort of rigging that up).

The layout itself is great, and is the reason to buy this. Everything else is
less great, and really shows its age (I have the newer model, the CT-312,
which dates from something like 2007). The biggest hardware deficiency is the
lack of a sustain pedal input, but I expect I can find a way around that with
MIDI out or by rigging something up with the (toggle!) sustain button on the
control panel. The sound synthesis is also pretty poor, but again, MIDI out.

The best thing about the Chromatone in comparison to all these other
alternative keyboards, is that it's (1) Available, and (2) Free! They're
clearing out old stock or something, so all I paid was shipping from Japan.

~~~
ScottFree
Would you suggest the Chromatone for a tone-deaf drummer who's never touched a
piano in his life? Or is it better to learn the traditional piano first?

~~~
mkl
I think in your case it would be better to learn a traditional keyboard
layout. There's way more training material and the fingering is a simpler
(fewer choices). It also lets you just go to some other place and play the
piano there (I think this is the main reason Janko didn't catch on).

I think Janko might be a good first keyboard layout for a guitarist or other
stringed instrument player.

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jacquesm
I just built a 6 row Janko keyboard as a retrofit for an existing keyboard or
piano. It was a lot of work to make a layout that can be used that way and
that is mechanically simple and reliable. The Janko layout makes playing the
piano as easy as playing the guitar, everything transposes with ease and
patterns have to be memorized only once.

That said, the piano/keyboard world is super conservative and people have
literally invested a lifetime in the familiar layout so even if a Janko
keyboard would be better on all measurable dimensions (and it isn't, though
there really are a lot of advantages) it is an uphill battle to get any
appreciable mind/market share.

See also: Dvorak and driving on the left hand side of the road, imperial
versus metric and more of those irrational and yet immovable discussions.

~~~
dfcowell
I agree with most of these examples except for the side of the road one, which
is truly arbitrary - at least in island nations.

I’ve driven in both left and right driving nations, the experience is
fundamentally identical.

~~~
reitzensteinm
It's my experience, being right handed, that it's easier to tackle spatial
problems center/right than center/left.

I've always assumed this was a common experience. If so, left and right hand
drive are not identical.

~~~
sleepydog
But which hand would you prefer to shift with? Manual transmissions are still
popular in many countries.

~~~
gamegoblin
I am in the US but drive a Japanese Domestic Market truck, so the steering
wheel is on the right side and I shift left handed. Someone who learns to
shift right handed will pick up shifting left handed within 1 hour. The brain
flips it all remarkably easily. The harder muscle memory to break is the turn
signal and windshield wipers being swapped.

I actually think what I am doing (a right-hand drive vehicle in a drive-on-
the-right country) is the easiest, because parallel parking is so much easier
when you are driving on the same side as the street curb. And being able to
get in and out of my vehicle from the sidewalk is nice.

~~~
jacquesm
I can drive both left and right hand side. It all works great but if I switch
frequently and I need to downshift for turns and sit on the right hand side
_invariably_ I'll hit the door really hard. I can't seem to get that bit
reprogrammed to the point that it is not happening.

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bobbiechen
This reminds me of the left hand buttons on the accordion (which play chords).
They're arranged in the order of the circle of fifths, so you can instantly
transpose to any key just by shifting your starting note and playing the same
physical pattern - at least, until you run out of buttons at one edge or the
other. It makes it much easier to play chords by ear compared to the piano (at
least, for me).

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prvc
On a traditional keyboard the second row of keys ("sharps", typically black)
are not only displaced further away from the player than the white keys, they
are also higher. This facilitates thumb crossings, playing passages in thirds,
makes common chords more comfortable, and so on. It seems these advantages are
lost with this alternative keyboard. Ease of transposition is not a big
advantage for a trained musician, who should be able to do it well for other
reasons (like reading orchestral scores), and the contexts in which it might
be useful are pretty small (accompanying a singer, pretty much).

~~~
coldtea
> _Ease of transposition is not a big advantage for a trained musician_

"Fast typing with QWERTY is not a problem for a trained touch typist".

Only once the cost of training has been amortised, through endless hours of
practice. This alternative design makes transposition trivial, and enables
many other types of playing by offering more alternatives for chords, note
relationships, etc.

Aside from manufacturing difficulties, standardization, etc (which make sense
as difficulties) I never could understand the Stockhold syndrome with the
prevalent designs being considered good for what they are. They are not any
kind of optimal or best-compromise, just historical accidents.

> _makes common chords more comfortable_

This reverses cause and effect.

It's not like there are common chords people like and the piano makes it
easier to play them. It's the reverse: the piano makes it easier to play
certain chords, so people have resorted to using them more, making them more
"common". They're common because the piano forces them on you. (Guitarists
have similar common chords they prefer to write to, because the guitar design
and standard tuning make them easier).

This alternative design frees people from having to accept some chords as
easier making all chords equally easy and equally transportable. In fact
easier, as there are multiple fingerings to chose from.

> _and the contexts in which it might be useful are pretty small (accompanying
> a singer, pretty much)._

That leaves out jazz, which uses transposition all the time (singer or not),
and of course downplays accompanying a signer, which is what 99% of
professional keyboard players do. The world has more bands and honky tonks
than classical pianists.

And it's not like such a keyboard like Janko or the Chromatone is some wild
design that only some inventor and 10 fans use.

Historically tons of accordionists (in Eastern Europe and Latin America) play
similar keyboard designs...

~~~
fortran77
It's really not a big deal. A few years of playing every scale and chord
progressions in every key back when I was 10 years old, and solfege training
with "movable do" and now I can play anything in any key.

~~~
prvc
It's so natural that I'm skeptical that there is any additional cognitive
burden for a trained player on the traditional system vs a trained player on
the Janko system. Perhaps even the reverse

~~~
zozbot234
The Janko system would work very well with _solmization_ , as opposed to the
usual kind of solfege. The relevant difference is that in solmization all
half-step intervals (including those that are introduced via accidentals!) are
always read as _mi_ - _fa_. These half-steps are precisely the intervals that
are treated specially in Janko and other isomorphic keyboards, compared to the
diatonic standard.

~~~
mkl
Do you have a link? The Wikipedia article on solmization says it's just the
process of naming notes with syllables and that solfege is the most common
form of it.

~~~
zozbot234
[https://www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/solmization](https://www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/solmization)
The wikipedia articles on solmization and hexachords are not very good
unfortunately.

------
fzzzy
I love the Janko keyboard. I made an iPhone version (never released) in 2009,
and I still use a monome version I also created. The monome version doesn't
have the staggered keys in every other row, but it's still quite usable and
retains the same properties with chord shapes always being the same in every
key.

------
bsaul
I tried visualizing what playing a d major scale would look like on that
keyboard, and it doesn’t seem any more obvious than on a normal keyboard...

~~~
jacquesm
The point isn't that a single scale is 'more obvious', the point is that they
are _all_ the same.

All of the patterns repeat, you can start any piece on any note and play it
blind and it will work instead of having 12 different ways of doing it.

~~~
acqq
Also the "Muto Music Method": it's not just that the common keyboard finger
positions aren't the same in 12 different scales, the notation could also be
made without all these # and "b" (sorry HN filters out the flat sign U+266D
from the text) and without the shapes of the melodies changing:

[https://muto-method.com/en/issue.html](https://muto-method.com/en/issue.html)

"The problems with 5 line notation"

I've found the page thanks to user mkl mentioning Chromatone keyboard here.

~~~
jacquesm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTRtCgaAEDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTRtCgaAEDE)

is really neat

