How observant are you?

[PeterA]

How observant are you?

As you regularly play your keyboard, here's a simple test to determine your powers of observation.

But first, to make absolutely sure that there's no cheating at all, I must ask you to step away from your instrument.

Is it completely out of view?

You're quite sure?

Good!

Ok, I want you to imagine you've opened a music shop and you're going to stock spare parts for your instrument, and in particular, spare keys for the keyboard.
It's fairly obvious that any black (ie sharp) key is just the same as any other black key, so you'll only need to stock one pattern of black key to cover all eventualities.

The question is this:

How many patterns of white (ie natural) key will you need to stock?

For the purpose of this exercise, you can ignore any special keys at the extreme ends of the keyboard, and just think about the regular white keys which are repeated in each octave. When you think you know the answer, scroll down to see if you're correct ...























... keep going ....

































...just a little bit more ....















... and the correct answer is .... 7.

It's true, no white key is exactly like any other.

If you look closely at G and A you will see that neither is symmetrical. The front of G goes farther to the right and the front of A goes farther to the left, so they are not interchangeable with each other, nor with D which is symmetrical.

And because C is made to nestle snugly against symmetric D, it is not interchangeable with F which nestles against asymmetric G. Nor is E interchangeable with B. On most keyboards, there is only .5mm difference, but they are not interchangeable.

If you’ve ever taken a keyboard apart and removed the individual keys you may notice that the white keys are numbered 1 to 7, which at first seems to be quite unnecessary. But now you know why.

So, full marks if you said 7. Your powers of observation are probably well above average.

However, if you gave the "common sense" answer of 3, you can have half a mark for effort.

All other answers, I’m afraid, score a big fat zero, but don't feel too bad about it.
So far, everyone I've tried this test on - including a professional piano teacher with years of experience - has got it wrong! So I thought it time to test you!

Peter

[Hugh-AR]

Peter,

My immediate thought was 3. I was thinking about the 'overall' shape of those keys without realising there were differences in their widths. I asked my grand-daughter this question, and she plays the piano beautifully (she is coming up to 16 yrs old). She thought about it for a few minutes, and also came up with 3. So it was a bit of a shock to find that the answer was 7!

Hugh

[dragon]

Mt first thought was 3, then I changed it to 4 after trying to picture the keyboard in my mind. .. Fred.

[Wally Gator]

Since you gave the answer in your posting I didn't have to guess at anything. But I honestly didn't know the answer. And I wouldn't have guessed 7 either.

[PeterA]

Just shows you how much we take for granted, until something is pointed out to us.

[Westgarth]

Fell right into that one Hugh. Felt sure the answer was three.

Inevitable really, if you heard me play you would know I never look at the keys.