box keyboards

I live and learn.

I’ve always played closed flat keyboards (Hohner etc) and most of the recieved wisdom is that this type of keyboard best suits Irish playing.

I recently came across a very good box with a stepped open keyboard at a price too good to miss and bought it despite reservations about my ability to adapt to the keyboard which seems to be based on a typewriter.

To any players who are playing flat closed boards and wondering about the alternatives I would now offer the following advice: get an open stepped keyboard if you feel the urge.

It took me about a week to adapt to it, and I find that in addition to being able to play the new box ok or better, I now play the flat closed keyboards of my other boxes more crisply than before. I can’t put the new box down.

When I started (here and playing box) a couple years ago I talked about having a stepped keyboard guistozzi.

When i started lessons, I moved to the flat/closed Irish keyboard. But I have never understood the supposed physical limitations attributed to the stepped. My teacher has played mine and seems to like it. I brought it on a trip to Ireland, and an older fellow who played for many years in a band and taught box played it and thought it was just fine (though he did initially pick it up and say ’Stepped keyboard? But nice mother of pearl keys)

I did not play it for about 8-9 months and started to alternate between the two recently. I find it like you indicate a ‘crisper’ feel than the flat keyboard.

Perhaps the older stepped keyboards before the availability of more precise manufacturing techologies were tough to play. But the newer ones seem fine.

I think Sharon Shannon played one and it did not seem to bother her.

I think what millionyears_bc meant by “crisply” is that practicing on the stepped-keyboard box forces you to overcome some lazy habits that your fingers can get away with on the flat-keyboard, so that when you later return to the flat keyboard, your fingering is more precise. Kind of like taking warm-up swings with a baseball bat with one of those weighted rings on it.

I think it’s something like that. The key travel is longer and the spacing of the keys closer on the steped keyboard which means that my fingertips have to strike straight down to avoid hitting adjacent buttons. On the flatkeyboards I can get a clean note just by sliding my finger over the button crown.

I switch between flat and stepped keyboards all the time and don’t notice a difference so long as the keys don’t disappear into the holes on the flat keyboard!

Paul

That actually is something I noticed on the Saltarelle.

But I think the mind is able to deal with the switch.