One of the great piano myths promoted by both ‘experts’ and
novices is that the flats or sharps are the black keys and less often... a
white key.
Truth be told the evolutionary design of the piano’s
construction and its tuning eliminated the dreaded flatting and sharping of the
stringed instruments. Simply put... by design, a Grand Piano has absolutely NO
flats and NO sharps. It cannot produce the sound of flatting or sharping any given
tone. A skilled player FAKES playing flats and sharps ‘cuz they ain’t there in
the piano.
The Piano isn’t even in the stringed instrument family... it’s
a percussion instrument in the musical family of drums and xylophones. It does
have strings but the strings get whacked by little hammers to set the strings
vibrating, thus producing the sounds. Once a key’s hammer whacks its set of
strings there is nothing a player can do with the keys to change the pitch
produced by those strings. Holding down the key while wiggling your finger or
wrist back and forth doesn’t produce a violin-like vibrato.
Technically speaking, flat and sharp are VERBS that have
erroneously been used as incorrect nouns with the piano. And the Math and
Science team hasn’t dealt with the problem yet.
Using modern music terms more precisely, to ‘flat’ a tone is
to produce a downward ‘bend’ in pitch. ‘Sharp’ is an upward bend in pitch. A
violin vibrato is a rapid up and down bend in pitch. Plucking a string on a
violin, cello or fretless guitar and sliding your finger holding the string way
up or down the neck of the instrument produces a more extensive ‘bend’ of pitch.
The massive cast iron frame in a Grand Piano or other
acoustic piano is specifically designed to STOP any bending of pitch in its
tracks. You can’t ‘bend’ an acoustic piano, no flat or sharp is allowed for in
the design or the standard tuning.
Now all that matters because you’re wasting valuable time and
effort learning with any piano method or music notation that includes the playing of
flats and sharps on an instrument that has none at all. Black Keys Matter
because a Grand Piano cannot ‘bend’ any pitch.
Giving the black keys their own names frees the player from the
classical music ideas that have nothing to do with the playing the piano.
