Information about keyboard instrument

"Keyboards" redirects here. For other uses of the word, see Keyboard.

Piano, today's most common keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano, which is used in nearly all forms of western music. Other widely used keyboard instruments include various types of organs as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments. In common language, it is mostly used to refer to keyboard-style synthesizers.

Clavier is a general term for any keyboard instrument. It was used especially in the 18th century and earlier in Germany by composers of baroque music to refer indiscriminately to the harpsichord, clavichord, and pipe organ.

History

Among the earliest keyboard instruments are the pipe organ, the clavichord, and the harpsichord. The organ is doubtless the oldest of these, appearing in the 3rd century BC, although this early instrument--called hydraulis--did not use a keyboard in the modern sense. From its invention until the 14th century, the organ remained the only keyboard instrument. Often, the organ didn't feature a keyboard at all, rather buttons or large levers which were operated by a whole hand. Almost every keyboard until the 15th century had 7 naturals to each octave.

The clavichord and the harpsichord appeared during the 14th century, the clavichord probably being the earliest. During their development, a B-flat key was added to the keyboard in order to remedy the tritone between F and B, and the other semitones were added later. The harpsichord and the clavichord were both very common until the widespread adoption of the piano in the 18th century, after which their popularity decreased. The piano was revolutionary because a pianist could vary the volume (or dynamics) of the sound by varying the vigor with which each key was struck. The piano's full name is "gravicèmbalo con piano e forte" meaning "harpsichord with soft and loud" but can be shortened to "piano-forte", which means "soft-loud" in Italian.)

(Keyboard instruments were further developed in the 20th century. Early electromechanical instruments, such as the Ondes Martenot, appeared early in the century.

The earliest fully electronic keyboard instruments were electronic organs that used oscillators and frequency dividers, together with a network of filters, to produce waveforms.

Much effort went into finding an instrument which sounded like the piano but lacked its size and weight. The electric piano and electronic piano were early efforts that, while being useful instruments in their own right, were not successful in convincingly reproducing the timbre of the piano. Electric and electronic organs were developed during the same period.

Significant development of the synthesizer occurred in the 1960s and has continued ever since. The most notable early synthesizer is the Moog synthesizer, which used analog circuitry. In time, digital synthesis became common.

Tape replay keyboards were invented in the 1940s and saw popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s. The best-known example is the Mellotron. These instruments became obsolete with the invention of samplers, which replay samples at any pitch.

Now Modern-day keyboards have such facilities as colour LCD screens, highly realistic voices and styles and MIDI recording.

List of keyboard instruments

Chordophones

Aerophones

Idiophones

Electrophones

External links

The general keyboard in the age of MIDI.

Keyboard may refer to:

In typing:

Alphanumeric keyboard
Keyboard (computing)
IBM PC keyboard
Chorded keyboard, on which several keys are pressed together to enter a command
Apple Keyboard

In music:

Musical keyboard

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musical keyboard.]] A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers on a musical instrument which cause the instrument to produce sounds.

Keyboards almost all share the common layout shown.
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piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonance frequency.
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Western music is the genres of music originating in the Western world (Europe and its former colonies) including Western classical music, American Jazz, Country and Western, pop music and rock and roll.
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organ is a keyboard instrument played using one or more manuals and a pedalboard. It uses wind moving through metal or wood pipes and/or it uses sampled organ sounds or oscillators to produce sound, which remains constant while a key is depressed.
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electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified or altered electronically - for example an electric
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Synthesizer is generally any kind of electronic musical instrument, or electronic device capable of producing or manipulating audio tones, such as musical notes, through audio signal processing.
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The 18th Century lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar.

Historians sometimes specifically define the 18th Century otherwise for the purposes of their work.
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Anthem
"Das Lied der Deutschen" (third stanza)
also called "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"
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Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750.^[1] This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and was followed by the Classical music era.
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A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when each key is depressed.

As well as the large instrument currently called a harpsichord, the harpsichord family also includes the smaller virginals, the
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clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition.
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pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by forcing pressurized air (referred to as wind) through a series of pipes. The size of pipe organs varies greatly: the smallest portable organs may have only a few dozen pipes, while the largest organs may feature
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The 3rd century BC started the first day of 300 BC and ended the last day of 201 BC. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period.

The first few decades of the century are characterized by a balance of power between the Greek Hellenistic kingdoms
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water organ or hydraulic organ (early types are sometimes called hydraulis or hydraulos or hydraulus or hydraula) is a type of automatic pipe organ blown by air, where the power source pushing the air is derived by water from a natural source (e.g. by a waterfall).
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14th century was that century which lasted from 1301 to 1400.

Events

The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age
Beginning of the Ottoman Empire, early expansion into the Balkans

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15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500.

Events

1402: Ottoman and Timurid Empires fight at the Battle of Ankara resulting in Timur's capture of Bayezid I.
1402: The conquest of the Canary Islands signals the beginning of the Spanish Empire.

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tritone
Inverse tritone
Name
Other names augmented fourth, diminished fifth
Abbreviation TT
Size
Semitones 6
Interval class 6
Just interval 7:5, 10:7, 45:32...
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For other meanings see Pianist (disambiguation).

A pianist is a person who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with a smaller ensemble, or accompany one or more singers or solo instrumentalists.
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Italian}}}
Official status
Official language of: European Union
European Union
Switzerland
San Marino
Vatican City
Sovereign Military Order of Malta

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The ondes Martenot (IPA: [õd maʀtəno]; French for "Martenot waves"; also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales) is an early electronic musical instrument with a keyboard and slide, invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot and
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An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument originally designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. It has developed today into two forms of the instrument, the imitation pipe organ as used in churches, and the Hammond organ-style instrument used in more popular
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''For other uses, see oscillator (disambiguation)

Oscillation is the variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states.
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Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a solid, liquid or gaseous medium.

In many cases the medium in which the wave is being propagated does not permit a direct visual image of the form.
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An electric piano (e-piano) is an electric musical instrument whose popularity started in the late 1960s, was at its greatest during the 1970s and still is big today. Many models were designed for home or school use or to replace a (heavy) and un-amplified piano on stage, while
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An electronic piano is a keyboard instrument designed to simulate the timbre of a piano (and sometimes a harpsichord or an organ) using analog circuitry.

Electronic Piano
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Keyboard Instrument

History

List of keyboard instruments

Chordophones

Aerophones

Idiophones

Electrophones

External links

Events

Events