Hacker News Reader

Y'know, I think this gets to a central issue in technology in general. Perhaps even the issue.

Let's say we all agree that most pianos should have one, consistent size. Even so, the optimal size is probably at least a little smaller than what we have today—after all, I'm seeing lots of complaints that the keys are currently too big, and almost none that they're too small.

So, is it worth changing the standard size to something more optimal? You would end up with a lot of older pianos that have the legacy size, and it would take a very long time for those to age out of use. But it would happen eventually, and the status quo is clearly creating problems.

Personally, I'd come down on the side of maintaining the status quo. Whatever benefit we'd get from from smaller keys would not be worth the pain of the transition. Everyone would have to learn a new size, and potentially replace their pianos.

And this is also why I'm not so enthused by USB-C. Or replacing the headphone jack.

But, clearly some change is needed, sometimes, or else we'd all be using Mac OS 9, and laptops gigantic enough to accommodate bulky optical disc drives. I'm in favor of those transitions—they were painful, but the need was great enough to make them worthwhile. All the way at the other end of the spectrum are Slack's weekly UI redesigns, both because of their frequency and because they rarely seem like clear-cut improvements.

We’ll still be playing piano in 10,000 years. I would hope we would have the gumption to be the generation who painfully went through the transition to make the piano accessible to all.

Can we switch from base-ten to base-eight while we're at it? That'd be far more painful, but also hugely beneficial in the long run. For one thing you could use the metric system everywhere while maintaining the ease of halving and doubling that the imperial system offers. It would obviously make various aspects of programming simpler too. But it's hard to imagine it ever happening, since the transition would just never be worth it (within the lifetimes of the people making the decision).

Not to derail this conversation, but I'm really curious: what ease is there in halving/doubling in the imperial system?

Halfs are easy enough in either. Quarters are hard in metric as 4 is not a factor of 10. Which is why imperial systems are often base 12 (gives you 3 and 4 as a factor). circles are base 360 so that you get factors form 2 all the way to 12.

How much this matters is open to debate, but base 10 is clearly a terrible thing in this. It might be a good compromise, but I am not sure.

Yeah, I meant repeated halving or doubling. So for example if you start with 1, and keep dividing by 2, in base 10 you get 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, 0.03125, etc. In base 8, 1, 0.4, 0.2, 0.1, 0.04, 0.02, 0.01, 0.004, etc. Much simpler.

Obviously multiplying and dividing by 5 and 10 are more natural in a base 10 system, but dividing things in halves, quarters, etc. (or multiplying by powers of two) are a much more common operation. (We only think of 10s as round numbers because of the base-10 decimal system.)

12 is useful in that it has so many different factors, but it misses all the benefits of being a power of 2, so I feel 8 is superior. Hexadecimal also has benefits, but my feeling is that 16 symbols would be too many for everyday use. Difficult to count on fingers and such. 8 really seems ideal to me. In fact, I've mused in the past that it's kind of a shame - you can imagine a world where people ignored their thumbs when finger counting and just lucked into a base-8 system thousands of years ago. (Although of course in that case we wouldn't call it base-8, it'd be base-10!)

> I've mused in the past that it's kind of a shame - you can imagine a world where people ignored their thumbs when finger counting and just lucked into a base-8 system thousands of years ago.

What a fascinating hypothetical!

But to the main topic - sorry to be dense about it, but I'm actually just not used to the imperial system. Which parts of it are easy to manipulate in this way? I know there are 12 inches in a foot but that's the only "easy" conversion I remember off the top of my head.

The metric system, since it's all based around base-10 counting, tends to operate in decimals. So you wouldn't normally talk about for example a quarter cm; rather you'd have 25mm. In the imperial system working in fractions is much more common, so you have quarter inches, eighth inches, etc. Halving is more intuitive using fractions since it amounts to multiplying the denominator, rather than dividing.

Anyway, I'm not really arguing for the imperial system, just saying that aside from legacy use, that's the one advantage I see for it vs metric. But a metric system based on base-eight... that would be beautiful.

Oh interesting, you're saying it's not about the specific conversion factors, but rather the idea that people tend to subdivide units into halves/quarters/etc in imperial, whereas they don't in metric.

I just meant in imperial, it's common to use fractional measurements. IE 1/16", or 1/4 cup or whatever. Doubling or halving those fractions, especially repeatedly, is simpler than with metric measurements. IE taking 1/4 of 25mm.

I was with you until this bit:

> This is also why I'm not so enthused by USB-C...

Please elaborate?

USB-A has become practically a universal standard for DC charging, and USB-A drives and peripherals are ubiquitious. USB-C breaks all of that. It's definitely smaller, and that's great, but I'll take a slightly slicker laptop that doesn't make me carry around an adapter.

You could have said exactly the same thing with USB itself was first introduced, though. And lots of people did: there were endless, massive complaints about the first iMac.

Right—I totally see both sides here! Some transitions are absolutely necessary, and worth the trade-off.

Part of the problem in my view is that, if you're going to make these sorts of switches, you ought to be planning ahead 30+ years. If you told me USB-C was going to be the last iteration of the format (at least for several decades), I'd be okay with some weirdness in the interim. By contrast, if you told me the USB forum was going to introduce USB-D in 2030, I would absolutely not be willing to put up with this.

USB type A/B connectors lasted for >10 years, but were obviously inadequate for most recent devices (which is why there were mini and micro B types, a type A “superspeed” connector with an associated "extended" micro B type, alongside a large number of proprietary other connectors), without even mentioning the worst type A misfeature of appearing symmetrical at a glance but not being symmetrical. Keeping type A/B as the default for another 10+ years would be horrible.

There is no apparent reason why USB Type C connectors will not last significantly longer. They support a much wider range of use cases (collapsing what were previously at least 4 or 5 different connector types into 1, and using the same connector at both ends), and were explicitly designed to be future proof. The people involved in the design were thinking decades ahead.

It is unfortunate that many device makers (e.g. people making power strips) have taken a while to adopt Type C. But in another 5 or 10 years the transition will just be a memory. At most you’ll need an occasional dongle for your legacy hardware.

The biggest future competitor for USB type C plugs is various kinds of wireless transmission.

USB4 should help somewhat here by effectively being a streamlined subset of the initial USB-C + Thunderbolt 3 specs, as well as finally giving a clear definition for how hubs should work (in my eyes, the one fatal flaw of USB-C so far).

The other side being USB mini-B, though, has problems. The mini-B connectors are notoriously fragile. C is clearly a win here. Using the same connector for both ends is clearly a win here. And moreover: laptops can and do (and imo should) have both A and C ports. So USB-C isn't as disastrous as a piano, which can only have one key interface.

Mini-B seemed to have an exceedingly short lifespan, even by tech standards. I have some mini-B gear, but micro-B seemed to quickly supersede mini-B. (Micro also has some fragility issues of its own, of course.)

I hate USB-C with a passion -- the spec is a shitshow, some cables will catch on fire if used for PD, the connectors can be snapped off the PCB, as have happened to me pretty frequently, and the plugs are regularly made too damn long and are nice cantilevers. Everything is wrong about its design and ruggedness for consumer use.

Consumer electronics needs to live upto higher standards than even military. One should be able to plug their phone into an external battery, shove the entire mess in their pocket, and go skiing. That's what consumer electronics should live upto. The cable housing should be supported snugly and firmly by the housing of the device, like one would do on a BNC connector, but on a smaller scale. The PCB shouldn't be taking all the torquing forces, as is currently the case.

How about a very slow and gradual transition? Say so that in one or two hundred years we have reached the optimal size by reducing the standard every decade just by a little.

That's a cool idea, but even that rate would probably be too fast. The piano I bought for a few hundred bucks on craigslist is 113 years old this year and still going strong. Good pianos last a long time.

I was surprised when I recently learned that the big concert pianos that are used in the music halls usually lasts less than a decade. But of course, they are played constantly. I assume a home piano that in best case gets played an hour a day or so last longer. And most home pianos are rarely played at all.

This.

Fellow pianist-with-smallish-hands here. The string players' paradigm of having differently-sized instruments as one grows up works well because they carry their instruments with them. Pianists are cursed with having to play whatever instrument we find on location (unless you bring your own electronic keyboard everywhere, which isn't a bad idea if it's practically possible). Differences in stiffness/tone quality/whatever are annoying enough to deal with already, and differently-sized keys is going to be a whole 'nother league of confusing. I'd personally rather be stuck with the same standard for key sizes everywhere at the expense of not being able to play all the repertoire I'd like.

Just going to say - for those that don't know Keith Jarrett.. go listen to the Koln Concert. When listening, remember that he improvised - meaning made up on the spot - every note that evening.

One of the most powerful moments on the piano, at least to me.

Amazon link to Koln concert: https://www.amazon.com/Koln-Concert-Keith-Jarrett/dp/B000026...

Seconded. The Koln Concert can't be oversold.

https://youtu.be/Pd_Kti6jvy8

What's even more fascinating to me is that the Köln Concert is just one of many long-form improvisations he did and, arguably, far from the best one.

In roughly the following order, I recommend:

Paris, 1988

Vienna, 1991

Lausanne, 1973

Sun Bear Concerts, 1976 (5(!) concerts in 14 days)

Bremen, 1973

La Scala, 1995

Munich, 1982

...and so on.

If you _get_ Jarrett, it's a love affair for life.

Totally agree.

But the best part of the story, which I wasn't aware of until recently, is this: when they organized the concert, they actually brought the wrong piano, and instead of a performance-ready piano, they brought a piano that was very bad ("The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers and weak in the bass register, and the pedals did not work properly" per Wikipedia).

When Jarrett arrived and tried the piano a few hours before the concert, he almost refused to play. There were other terrible circumstances (he had barely slept in a few days, because of mixups hadn't eaten properly, etc). In the end he was convinced to go on, and played differently than he was used to to try and get the most out of the piano.

What followed is widely hailed as a masterpiece, and remains his most popular work.

I had a Keith Jarret casaste last century. It was just him at the piano, and parts were ok but other parts were mesmerizing. It was also when I discovered that when you listened through headphones you could hear him singing along.

I’ll check out this concert. Sadly he’s not well and can no longer play.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/music/keith-jarrett-...

Yeah, the only way I see this becoming practical is if you can decouple the keyboard from the "sound box".

That is, when you encounter a "Steinway Model X", you should be able to swap out only the keyboard, while retaining the acoustic qualities of the piano itself.

Some standard keyboard/piano interface is needed for this. It could be digital or mechanical.

Such a thing is perfectly possible to build, and should be acceptable even for "purists" who won't touch electronic pianos. The bigger problem would probably be to get piano manufacturers to agree to building these things.

I don’t think it’s realistic. It would be very hard to design without changing the responsiveness and tone of the keys. And even if possible “purists” won’t accept it for those reasons and also because it isn’t a traditional piano.

No, it can't be mechanical. The interconnection between the key hammers and the strings is THE defining sound of the piano. It is a direct mechanical linkage. If you change this, it is a different instrument, and cannot sound the same.

If it's digital, well, why bother with the soundbox at all, and simply have an electronic keyboard entirely?

There is no direct mechanical linkage between the keys and the strings. The piano action sets the hammer moving, and then it flies through the air uncontrolled until it bounces off the string. The only control the player has is how fast they start it moving, and there's no reason you couldn't do this with a solenoid (although it would have to be a fast one to match the latency of the mechanical action).

I’d say it’s not possible. The action of the keys and exactly how the hammers hit and are released from the strings are integral to the sound.

If you're willing to break with tradition, couldn't you go digital and bring your own keyboard? I haven't played an acoustic piano in years.

In theory, we could have acoustic player pianos available as MIDI output devices, so you could still get the sound of one while using your own keyboard.

> In theory, we could have acoustic player pianos available as MIDI output devices, so you could still get the sound of one while using your own keyboard.

Not a theory. Such things have existed for quite a while. See https://disklavier.com/

Long enough that it's the Disklavier line because the early models used a floppy disk for storage.

  If I had spent my practice career on a smaller
  gauge instrument, I would be hobbled on any house
  piano.

I somehow find it unlikely that you could go an entire career without ever having a few hours to practice on a larger keyboard. TFA cites some research saying that it takes about an hour to completely acclimate to even the smallest of the standardized sizes they propose. I could sort of believe that you'd have not spent as much time stretching and might not be quite as flexible, but at the same time, I could also see you having had fewer hand injuries and being more flexible.

edit: I read more of the linked site. I no longer particularly believe that practice could make you better at reaching larger spans. http://smallpianokeyboards.org/pain-injury-and-performance-q...

When you live in a world where you know that pianos come in different sizes, you teach people how to adapt for that. Right now we live in a world where those are gotcha novelties.

If the alternative keyboard sizes get more popular it may become standard to brush up on playing all the sizes.

Professional saxophone players usually specialize in one of the major sax types (like alto, tenor, or baritone) but they know how to play all of them. The key positions for those three are mostly the same but they play completely differently. It's not too hard to learn each one but it takes some practice. With prior experience it doesn't take that long to learn the ins and outs of a new model.

For the different keyboard sizes, that might be something that new students could train on. Professionals already out there might want to practice on them but that stinks to have to get stuck with a random piano size at a gig.

The baroque harpsichord literature is riddled with 12ths and fast 10ths for this reason. The keys are smaller than piano keys, so it isn't be a problem to hit them.

1. That's definitely an issue. But in the space occupied by a single upright acoustic piano, a music venue could easily store three digital pianos. No doubt it would take decades before you could be able to rely on a venue having made this transition though.

2. Yes, but it sounds harder, and needlessly so.

3. Yeah but that actually sounds like a good thing.

The best digital pianos are enough cheaper than the best acoustics that you would save money. For top level competitions digital is enough worse that quality goes down.

Most piano players are not good enough that the best digital is a hindrance to their playing, and the ability to sound like several thousand not a piano instruments is useful in itself. But then most people compare a cheap digital to a much more expensive acoustic and of course the acoustic is better.

Good points. I'd add to this that small hands are actively advantageous for a lot of repertoire.

Bach fugues, say, or fast intricate passages can be a nightmare for long-fingered pianists to get their hands around. The OPs focus on big Liszt or Rachmaninov chords is understandable but there's so much more to piano playing.

I think choice is always a good thing. no one forces someone to buy these other pianos. There are always pros and cons but almost 100% of the time choice is a better solution.