Piano Keyboard Layout

[clav3]

Hello!

I really hope my post will not be recceived as a result of my ignorance, but I just can't find a satisfactory answer for the question that has been bothering me for a very long time. It's about the logic behind the layout of a piano keyboard.
To begin with, I should say that I am no musician, I have never attented to a musical school. Music production is my hobby though and also I used to learn how to play a guitar. I have a technical education that's why I am looking for a logical answer that would convince me to learn piano. It's a matter of philosophy really.
The point is that I don't understand why a piano keyboard is built in the way it is built. From the technical point of view every note represents a sound of a certain frequency that forms a certain sequence with all other notes. This means that all sounds are equally important and can easily be observed on a guitar fretboard. The frequency quotient of notes F and E is equal to the quotient of C# and C. Why divide the notes to the white "natural" and black "sharp/flat" ones then? Why a black key wasn't placed between E/F or B/C (of course changing the other keys accordingly making a continous black-white scheme)? The only excuse I found for this is that the player would recognise the keys (which is funny, as nobody complains about it with a guitar). Some opinions say that the piano key layout is based on C Major scale and the black keys are only additions to fill the gaps. In my opinion this is extremely complicating the way of playing other scales. Also the way of playing chords, in comparison with guitar, doens't make sense to me at all. For example C Major Triad has a different fingering than D Major Triad.
I am really getting lost in the piano layout, because I can't find any advantages of using it. I try to believe that if its idea has survived for such a long time and because so many people use it regularly, it has to be the optimal solution. I really try, but fail.

It may be worth mentioning that I have found some answers like:
"because it was invented for C Major";
"because it fits human hand";
"because of history";
"because the notation..." and so on. None of those is logical though.

What actually is logical is this device: https://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=layout
Could anyone compare it to the piano key layout  (and maybe guitar fretboard) and show me why piano is superior?

If this has already been answered somewhere, I would be grateful for any direction, link, video, anything.. but still a discussion preferably.

[richard black]

Well, I suppose ultimately the answer is that it's not necessarily logical - hey, it's certainly NOT logical - but history has made it that way and it seems unlikely that a significant body of people will ever be found who are prepared to undergo the massive relearning process that would be involved in adapting to a new system.

Just about the only logical thing in western-type music is the chromatic scale, which (give or take a small discrepancy) arises out of the circle of fifths, in turn made up of third-harmonic sequences. Beyond that, the two modes used for most music since about 1600 are really rather arbitrary, and as a result of their popularity the design of many instruments is also arbitrary - but convenient. Possibly not as convenient as some alternatives might be, but convenient enough that we can work with it. Beyond that, it's simply inertia among players and designers!

[bleicher]

It is a recognisable pattern which repeats every octave. If it was entirely alternately white and black notes you wouldn't be able to see which note was which. I'm sure there are other patterns which would work, as long as they uniquely identified the notes and repeated each octave.

Harps have seven strings per octave. The C is red and the F is blue. It would work just as well with a green D and purple G, or any other combination of colours and notes. But whichever pattern it was, all harps would need to be the same, and that's the standard we've ended up with, in the same way that the current keyboard layout is the standard we've ended up with.

[lostinidlewonder]

When I teach beginners the piano who have never actually considered the black notes of the keyboard and its importance, I let them solve that for themselves by putting a large piece of paper in front of the black notes perpendicular to the keyboard. They then notice that there is no way of really telling one white note from the other, they all look the same. If we also put black notes without any spacing (that we see at EF and BC) we also would have no reference to tell one note from the other.

Because we work on a 12 semi-tone per octave system in Western music the pattern on the piano works well to distinguish the difference notes. You could visualize it also from F as 3blacks 2blacks instead of the C 2blacks 3blacks, it makes no difference, but you cannot really create different patterns, having other combinations of blacks which maintain pattern of the notes also makes the piano look much more difficult than the standard 2/3 groupings.

c|d|ef|g|a|bc|d|e f|g|a|b (standard spacing)

c|d|e|f#|g#|a#|c|d|e|f#|g#|a#| (black white config)

You can make your own configurations up but they just look more confusing than the standard.

[slane]

Oooh, interesting question. It seems the answer lies in a combination of cultural standards and the dimensions of our hands.

According to wikipedia, the first keyboards were often based on the tones used in Gregorian chants, so often included a Bflat and a Bnatural on the white keys. So there's your cultural standard. Later, I imagine, they took out the Bflat to make the scale on the white keys Ionian.
Again a cultural standard, but going back to the chants explains why C major was settled on.
Basically some scale has to be on the white keys and it may as well be C major

But why the black keys? Well as someone pointed out they create landmarks to navigate by, but that could be done some other way, however, imagine if all the keys were white .. you wouldn't be able to stretch an octave! And the "sameness" (the double frequency) of an octave is more than just a cultural concept. Cats understand that sameness too. Its fundamental.
Aha! You say, Make the keys narrower! But then our fingers wouldn't fit on the keys!

Haha! I managed to get your list of illogical previous answers into one post! Well done me.
The hexagon "key" board looks very interesting but even if someone had thought of it, I doubt it would have been within the technical capabilities of people 500 years ago.
That will work with an electronic device, where each note is actually a button, but where a hammer has to hit a string that necessarily has to be arranged in parallel rows, it would be very hard to implement.
Oh and .. the hexagon keyboard still represents the same scales that westerners recognise as being "right". There is still no "black" key between B&C and E&F, they are still 1 semitone apart. There's a book called This is Your Brain on Music which explains how much cultural standards in music we absorbed as children just by being exposed to music.

Now lets talk about the qwerty keyboard ....  

[clav3]

Wow, thank you kindly for your input.

The division of the black keys to the groups of 2 and 3 indeed helps in orientation. In the constant black-white key configuration, which would actually be
c|d|e|f#|g#|a#|c|d|e|f#|g#|a#|...
the octaves could be marked in many different ways though, even similar to guitar frets (dots), so I don't really think this was the unaviodable case. This may look strange because of the flats on white keys, which is not what most of you are used to, especially considering the notification standards, but it is actually completely logical from the strictly mathematical point of view. Fingers would fit too, because it's still the same size.
Anyways it would seem that this indeed is a historical issue and no matter how strange and imperfect it might appear to be, noone can change it. I can only feel disappointed that it went this way and not the other (for exaple the all black-white or hexagon). The hexagon keyboard on the other hand proves that the evolution might still go on.. but it's no longer a classic piano.

[lostinidlewonder]

The division of the black keys to the groups of 2 and 3 indeed helps in orientation. In the constant black-white key configuration, which would actually be
c|d|e|f#|g#|a#|c|d|e|f#|g#|a#|...

Thanks I didn't realize I missed out that F# when I copy pasted! Fixed it

the octaves could be marked in many different ways though, even similar to guitar frets (dots), so I don't really think this was the unaviodable case.

With the guitar you have different pitches near the same positions, unlike the piano where they are spread out and notes do not run parallel to one another.

This may look strange because of the flats on white keys, which is not what most of you are used to, especially considering the notification standards, but it is actually completely logical from the strictly mathematical point of view. Fingers would fit too, because it's still the same size.

Notation wise you are right it would be very strange to try and sight read music on an instrument like this because some parts the accidentals are on white notes and on others they are on blacks. What is more confusing however is that you would need to have perfect/relative pitch to be able to identify which notes you are playing since it would be indeterminable which notes you are playing by trying to observe a pattern from black/white/black/white which has no obvious repeated pattern that encompasses the 12 semi-tones. This would also obviously slow down ones learning progress and accuracy of jumping larger intervals.