Piano Keyboard

*The Piano or Standard Keyboard Layout*


Basic Keyboard Notes



	The Piano was first made in 1700 by a man called Bartolomeo Christofori di Francesco, it's predecessors were instruments such as the Harpsichord, Virginal and Spinet. It was originally called a Gravicembalo col piano e forte (harpsichord with soft and loud), this was then shortened to Piano-forte, then again to Paino in the early 1900's. The modern standard piano has 220 strings (230 on a grand piano) and 88 keys. It consists of 52 white and 36 black keys, and comprises 7 complete octaves plus 4 spare notes (called a minor third) in a natural C scale of notes from C to B.. There are 7 white notes and 5 black notes to each octave. There are however non-standard Piano keyboards called Bosendorfer's or Imperial Grand pianos which have either 92 (Model 225) or 97 keys ((Model 290).




	The above is a diagram of a keyboard with the octaves numbered, subsequent octaves continue in the same sequence for all the remaining keys. In music there are three different types of note; Naturals have no symbols and are displayed simply as the note letter, sharp notes are denoted by the symbol "#" and flat notes by a "b", so A means A natural, G# means G sharp and Bb means B flat. As you can see neither of these diagrams show flat notes, only naturals (white keys) and sharps (black keys). The flat notes are the equivalent black keys down the scale from the natural notes, for example; B flat (Bb) is the black key to the left of natural B and is the same as A sharp (A#), D flat (Db) is the same as C sharp (C#) etc. Below is a diagram of a keyboard as used by piano tuners, all the keys are numbered in sequence left to right from 1 to 88 regardless of octave.



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Wikipedia - Musical Keyboard