Sonomes use the harmonic table format,
and players prefer it since all notes of the major and minor scales
fall under the fingers, and all common chords can be played with one or
two fingers. All chords found in conventional chord progressions, in
some inversions, can be easily played on a sonome with very simple hand
movements.
Just as a Les-Paul Gibson is a type of guitar, and a guitar is an instrument with its strings laid out in a certain manner, tuned in a certain way, a sonome is an instrument with its notes laid out in the Harmonic-Table format. This layout is especially useful for quick learning and playing chords. For a great demo, see right: Actual experienceOne of us (Ken Rushton) has long suspected that someone who has taken piano lessons, not not locked into the piano mind-set would take off with the new keyboards, as teaching the fingers to hit ergonomically designed keys in different places (especially logical, consistent places that match musical hearing), is a trivial thing compared to all the other things already learned. Among them will be finger-coordination, timing, rhythm, coordination of two hands, etc, etc. It's good to see this conjecture confirmed by Tobia here, following is a snippet:Tobia_ wrote:I've been taking piano lessons for years, and the most I could do was a few scales and a couple simple pieces—learning which would take 6 months each. One hour after I unwrapped my Axis 49 I was playing jazz scales. One month later, I'm playing in a band. In one song I play a full strings part with my left hand (from double bass to violins) and the piano part with my right hand. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. If this doesn't become the most used musical instrument ever, I'll be damned. So, first and foremost, a very heartfelt THANK YOU to you guys for believing in it and actually making it possible. For more details of the way the keys are laid out, and a brief overview of the musical consequences, see: On this site you will also hear much about the jammer layout, here is some information on how they are related. And finally, some notes on how the fingers go. Playing the keyboard Summary - from WikipediaThe instrument has these advantages over a standard keyboard:
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