keyboard

In music, a horizontal set of black and white levers, called keys, found on keyboard instruments. They are arranged in order of the pitch of the notes they control, and allow performers to play many more strings or reeds than they could have done otherwise, and jump between them very rapidly. The keyboard is a major innovation of Western music. It was used on medieval instruments of the organ type (including the portative organ and the reed organ), and then on Renaissance stringed instruments such as the clavichord and hurdy-gurdy. Keyboard instruments were designed so that musical intervals could always be reproduced accurately.

The early clavichord is sometimes thought of as a monochord. This was basically a soundbox with one stretched string. The pitch was changed by moving the bridge to different points on the string. Adding the keyboard to the clavichord gave the instrument a greater flexibility and reliability of pitch and was important in showing the relationship of string length to pitch. Instrument makers seized on the user-friendly keyboard mechanism to create new markets for amateur and domestic use, creating in the clavichord a mechanized plectrum guitar, in the harpsichord a mechanized lute, in the hurdy-gurdy a keyboard viol, and in the fortepiano a mechanized dulcimer.