Black Keys Matter Now What?

update 10/6 /16

Okay the black keys matter so now what? “Emancipating” the blacks won’t work... that was an unconstitutional Yankee/Unionist con game. True liberty begins with some basic knowledge.

There’s a repeating pattern of twelve keys on the piano. The individual tones produced by the piano also repeat in a pattern of twelve. A ‘Twave’ is a set of twelve consecutive piano keys and their tones. On a 61-key, the first Twave all the way down the keyboard to the left is the Twave pattern we use as our standard. It’s the most natural one to choose as a standard and easy to spot.

The piano’s repeating patterns of 12, in both its keys and tuning, creates twelve unique family units. Twelve Clans of keys where each Clan has a common ancestry among the members of that Clan. The Five Black Clan names are J, R, H, Y, T. The White Clans are Z, D, K, V, G, N, L.

Each Standard Twave location on the keyboard is like a neighborhood with an identical physical layout to the keys. However, the tones in each neighborhood have a ‘range’ and we label each Twave Range with a vowel sound. By combining the Twave Consonants with the Range Vowels we get 60 unique names for the piano keys. That gives us the start of the I-See Piano Syllabary.

There are a few tricks to the proper pronunciation of the words in the Syllabary because I-See is part of a “Linguage” a special category of language where your lips don’t need to move. (A skilled Ventriloquist, such as Terry Fator, speaks in the purely ‘lingual’ form of the English language.)

The vowel sounds are the standard long vowel sounds with the ‘u’ pronounced as an ‘oo’ sound; as in ‘tool’ or ‘rule’. So for the vowel sounds in I-See its:

‘a’ as in ‘day’, ‘e’ as in ‘we’, ‘i’ as in ‘tie’, ‘o’ as in ‘go’... then ‘oo’ for the ‘u’ as in ‘tool’ or ‘rule’. 

With the Twave Consonants, for 10 of them we use the usual English language pronunciation. The ‘G’ is pronounced with the hard ‘g’ sound as in ‘go’ or ‘get’. And that leaves the oddest pronunciation in the Twelve Clans... the ‘V’ sound is NOT pronounced like ‘v’ as in ‘very’. It’s pronounced like the ‘th’ sound in ‘thy’ or ‘thee’. That’s how Ventriloquists pronounce a ‘V’ sound without moving their lips and in I-See it works the same way.

I-See gives us a fast way to read, write, speak or hear the musical information we need as Rebel Piano players. The consonant gives us the Key Clan... and the Vowel gives us the neighborhood range telling us which piano key is involved. For a full set of 88 keys we just add four more vowel sounds but don’t worry about those right now. In Rebel Piano we use more than just the Syllabary but I-See is a good way to start you on your way to playing. (note: I-See = Isee = isee are homonyms of I.C. which is short for Iroquois Confederacy. That's where the name comes from.)

Here’s an example of what you can do as a player, or as a song-writer, using I-See. Borrowing an idea that’s been around since ancient Greece we can write the piano key name above the song lyrics. We’ll use the opening lyrics of the patriotic tune ‘Dixie’ as the example.

Yi-Vi	Ji	Ji	Ji-Ri	Vi  Hi	Yi	Yi	Yi	Vi
I__	wish	I	was	in  the	land	of	cot-	ton.

In that version, Dixie is played mostly using the black keys ‘cuz the black keys matter. More to come later... stay tuned...

(Gotta question or comment? Head over to the Rebel Piano Questions page... click on the link under 'Piano Confederacy' in the right sidebar.)

“Life's piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys.” - Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Piano Racism

Piano Racism

Piano lessons don’t work because the lessons, the music notation and music theory are totally racist.

That old-fashioned, inbred piano racism promoting black key hate makes learning piano so hard and so convoluted that few people actually survive lessons and become players. People don’t become players because they had lessons... they become players DESPITE having lessons. The simple truth is piano lessons don’t work, lessons produce more failures than successes.

Every adult starting piano lessons already has an innate fear of the black piano keys. Quick references to the dreaded sharps and flats are scattered about in popular culture, in movies and TV shows. The black keys are always treated like they’re the scary, criminal inferiors of their ‘friendly’ white key neighbors.

“Okay piano students... let’s start learning to play piano by only touching the white keys. Those whiteys got their letter names A, B, C, D, E, F or G. The evil blacks got no names of their own. So just leave the black keys there to die, kids. Ya know... just like the Union Army did during the Civil War with its wounded black soldiers on the battlefields.”

Sure... people might say Black Keys Matter but then just like the racists they are they just laugh it all off... doing nothing to end Piano Racism or the supremacy of the white key master race. And so the disasters that we call piano lessons sail onward like keyboard U-boats captained by the Piano Nazis we call music experts.

I think it was Martin Loopy B.B. King who said it best... black and white piano keys should be judged by the content of their inner character.

Look within the wooden behemoth called an ‘acoustic’ piano and you can see the true equality of its inner piano workings. A technological marvel of felt covered wooden hammers and metal strings. Every key a separate but equal entity. Each with an equal job opportunity to take a whack at its set of strings at the press of its outer-world key. In that racist outer-world of black and white keys no black key ever has its own name, just a slave name of the white neighbors.

The same is true for electronic keyboards and ‘digital’ pianos. Total inner equality in the circuitry and modern gizmos producing the tones that we of the outer-world hear and then...

“LOOK OUT! There’s black keys out here... run for your lives. Don’t touch those black things they’re sharped!”

Adding to the insult is the inner tuning of the piano. More than a century ago equality came to the tuning of the instrument. “Equal Temperament” brought equality to the tones produced by the piano strings. And yet, to this day, the centuries old practices of European keyboard racism continue on.

It’s time to end the nonsense. Time to bring true equality to the outer-world of the piano and the piano players.

Free the black keys, grant them their own names and you free yourself from the ‘black dotted death’ that is traditional music notation.

#BlackKeysMatter  #PianoRacism  #PianoNazis

Quote of the day: " ...as usual with the (Union Army), they posted their negro regiments on their left and in front, where they were slain by hundreds, and upon retiring left their dead and wounded negroes uncared for, carrying off only the whites, which accounts for the fact that upon the first part of the battle-field nearly all the dead found were negroes." - April 27, 1864 - Battle of Ocean Pond-Federal Official Records, Vol. XXV, Chapter XLVII, pg. 341