A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine (acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard). Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard or simply piano keys.
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Piano keyboard in the context of Mallet percussion
A keyboard percussion instrument, also known as a bar or mallet percussion instrument, is a pitched percussion instrument arranged in the same pattern as a piano keyboard and most often played using mallets. While most keyboard percussion instruments are fully chromatic, keyboard instruments for children, such as ones used in the Orff Schulwerk, may be diatonic or pentatonic.
Despite the name, keyboard instruments such as the celesta and keyboard glockenspiel are not considered keyboard percussion instruments, despite being idiophones, due to the different skillsets required to play them. This is because keyboard percussion instruments do not possess actual keyboards, but simply follow the arrangement of the keyboard.
Piano keyboard in the context of Keyboard glockenspiel
The keyboard glockenspiel (French: jeu de timbre) or organ glockenspiel is an instrument consisting of a glockenspiel operated by a piano keyboard. It was first used by George Frideric Handel in the oratorio Saul (1739). It was also used in the 1739 revivals of his Il Trionfo del Tempo and Acis and Galatea, and the next year in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Half a century later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed a strumento d'acciaio in The Magic Flute (1791) to represent Papageno's magic bells. It is now considered proven that Mozart meant a keyboard glockenspiel.
From the 19th century onwards, the keyboard glockenspiel fell into the background due to the introduction of the celesta in 1886, which, due to its larger range and more modern construction, could also play more difficult glockenspiel parts.[9] In contrast to the very soft sound of the celesta (produced by the felt hammers of the playing mechanism), the historical keyboard glockenspiel had a very clear, metallic sound. Its sound plates were struck with steel or hard plastic clappers. It had no sound-enhancing soundboard and usually had a range of 2 to 2.5 octaves. There are also a smaller number of historical instruments with a range of 3 1/3 octaves (C5–E8).