The Widmann Blog » music http://blog.widmann.org.uk Thomas Widmann's blog about politics, linguistics, programming, food, kids and life in general Fri, 18 May 2012 22:02:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 They were lucky Italy didn’t win http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/05/27/3903/ http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/05/27/3903/#comments Fri, 27 May 2011 17:29:53 +0000 thomas http://blog.widmann.org.uk/?p=3903 The European Broadcasting Union have just released the details of the voting split of the recent Eurovision contest.

On their website, it’s just numbers, so I’ve made a pretty graph to illustrate the difference between the juries’ opinions and how people voted in their living rooms:

It is clear that they were very lucky Azerbaijan won, given that it was the popular winner, too.

If Italy had won, there would have been an uproar today – after all, ten other songs were more popular in the televoting process, so the Italian song really wasn’t the people’s favourite (although I rather liked it).

I wonder whether they’ll continue releasing the voting splits, or whether they’ll stop as soon as the popular winner loses because of the juries.

]]> http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/05/27/3903/feed/ 0 Transposing Incy Wincy Spider using the Jankó keyboard http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/03/16/3541/ http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/03/16/3541/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:34:34 +0000 thomas http://blog.widmann.org.uk/?p=3541 Knowledge of the Jankó keyboard has taught me how to do something that has until now been beyond me: transposing a tune. It’s really easy:

Incy Wincy Spider is most easily played on a piano using eight adjacent white keys: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Here’s how that would look on the Jankó keyboard:

Let’s try to transpose it to start on F. We simply move our hands (the red box here) so that it starts there:

We see that the keys we need to play are F-G-A-A#-C-D-E-F, and you can test that by playing it on a normal piano.

Let’s look at another example:

Here we are starting on B, which leads to the sequence B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#-B.

Finally, here’s Incy Wincy starting on F#:

The sequence of keys is F#-G#-A#-B-C#-D#-F-F#.

So to transpose a piece on a normal keyboard, all you have to do is to imagine how you play it on a Jankó keyboard, shift your hands and see which keys you’d now be playing, which you can then find again on a normal piano.

]]> http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/03/16/3541/feed/ 2 The Jankó keyboard http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/03/16/3532/ http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2011/03/16/3532/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:01:05 +0000 thomas http://blog.widmann.org.uk/?p=3532

Janko Piano
Originally uploaded by Ragtimer1

I am not a musician, although there are plenty of those in my family. I did play the violin for a year or so as a kid, but my piano skills were for years limited to one-finger versions of Incy Wincy Spider and one or two more other tunes.

However, a few days ago one of Dougie’s golf friends donated his old Yamaha PSR-530 keyboard to us, which made me study a couple of the GarageBand piano lessons that you get for free with a Mac.

After that experience, I felt a bit like I did when I was learning to drive – I kept asking myself why it was designed so badly.

However, a quick Google search taught me about the Jankó keyboard. You can read the details by following the link, but basically you can transpose a tune simply by shifting your hands.

It never seem to have become very popular, but there is a Japanese company making a similar MIDI keyboard. Here is a demonstration:

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