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The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas , which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons , which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings.
Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine (acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell , or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard).
The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ invented in the third century BC. [2] The keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian (late 4th century), who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu . . . intonet, that is "let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty ...
Despite the fact that the organ is also a keyboard instrument, and that in Bach's time the distinction wasn't always made whether a keyboard composition was for organ or another keyboard instrument, Wolfgang Schmieder ranged organ compositions in a separate section of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Nos. 525-771).
Many musicians have pointed out that every musical key conjures up specific feelings. [5] This idea is further explored in a radio program called The Signature Series . American popular songwriter Bob Dylan claimed the key of C major to "be the key of strength, but also the key of regret". [ 6 ]
The remaining five notes of the chromatic scale (the black keys on a piano keyboard) were added gradually; the first being B ♭, since B was flattened in certain modes to avoid the dissonant tritone interval.
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Although B major is usually considered a remote key (due to its distance from C major in the circle of fifths and fairly large number of sharps), Frédéric Chopin regarded its scale as the easiest of all to play on the piano, as its black notes fit the natural positions of the fingers well; as a consequence he often assigned it first to beginning piano students, leaving the scale of C major ...