>12pitches/octave

A reposting in plain text:

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 took only a few weeks to become fluent
playing this fingerboard configuration, with great dividends in triadic
consonance's (I use 1/5 comma meantone). 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 7:4 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