When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The white piano keys are known as the natural keys, because they sound a natural note as opposed ...

Instead of hitting one key and getting one note, Arnalds can hit one key and get a multitude of unanticipated notes. That does pose one problem, though: There's no way to replicate what the piano ...

A typical piano has 88 keys spanning just over seven octaves. There are other, smaller keyboards or synthesizers that have fewer keys – most come in increments of 25, 32, 49, 61 or 72 keys.

Let’s go back to the days before the piano, when composers wrote for the harpsichord, which has just 60 keys, and each key is its own note, its own sound. Around 1700, a musical technician named ...

"We want to continue with the 108-key range; I personally think it's the minimum frequency range for a piano in the 21st century,” he says. "I could not stand to sit at an 88-key piano now. I would ...

"I'd hate to go back to the 88-key piano," he says. "I couldn't stand it. It's too limited." The extra notes might lend themselves to great feats of acrobatics, but they're not exactly musical.

An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C. It has 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made up of seven white keys ...

''The most keys any other piano maker has made is 97. This is the first time you can sit down at one piano and play the full piano repertoire without leaving out notes,'' he says.