>12 pitches/octave

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Bill Alves wrote,

>I'm not sure the limiting factor was entirely the added expense (or,
>alternatively, the diminished range) of the instrument. Increasing the
>number of keys greatly increases the complexity that performers have to

>master. A very few split-key instruments were available to players
(such as
>Handel) dedicated enough to adapt their technique. Otherwise, I think
that
>12-tone-per-octave standardization of keyboards was driven not by
>19th-century mass production (as some have claimed), but by
14th-century
>player convenience as much as economic compromises.

When I started playing the tenor viol about 2 years ago, I could not
abide the compromise tunings of F# and Bb on the first
fret. So, I split my first fret, and soon after also the third fret to
get good G# and Ab on the F string. Of course, each split fret
also produces non-coincident "enharmonic" notes on all six strings. A
few days ago, I thought to count the number of
pitches/octave this arrangement produces, and was surprised to find that
it was at least 16, and some octaves had 18! It only
took a few weeks to become fluent playing this fingerboard
configuration, with great dividends in triadic consonance's (I use
1/5 comma meantime). Of course, there is no ambiguity in the one-to-one
mapping of notation to finger position (with the
possible exception of using an augmented 6th instead of a minor 7th when
it is clear that the composer intended a 4:7 tuning). I
can't imagine that a keyboard with split black keys would be any more
difficult to learn to play. Therefore, I cannot accept the
"player convenience" factor as the overriding reason for 12 pitch/octave
keyboards.

Fred Reinagel