Piano Palette

Guitar and Piano

The guitar was invented a bit earlier than the piano. So was the harpsichord. In fact, stringed instruments have been around since before the dawn of written history. Pianos and harpsichords were invented to make it easier for "those lacking the subtle dexterity of Olympians," to play music. And they do. Far, far easier. In fact, no instrument comes closer to the quintessence of 12-tone music than the piano. You might say it is the Mac OS of music.

Sure, we love stringed instruments for all their nuance and direct feel. And lest we come to disdain the piano, remember: It too is a stringed instrument.

The Layman's Layout

The white keys on a piano contain all the natural notes from the key of C / Am. The black keys are all the sharps and flats that surround C Major (and happen to be the F# Major / Eb minor pentatonic scale.) The relationship between scale tones and piano keys follows the Circle of Fifths:

The key of C Major has no black keys. Moving up a Fifth, the key of G gains a black key (F#). Next the key of D gains C#. This progress continues until we get all the way up to B which has all the black keys in the scale. Then F# (Gb) and C# (Db) have all the black keys but different white keys. Beginning with Ab (G#) we begin to lose black keys one at a time until we get back around to C again.

Color Coding

Tones in the Current Scale are Blue

Blue is the color used in the Piano and Circle Palettes to indicate Scale Tones. In the Piano Palette there are two different shades of blue - a lighter shade for white keys and a darker shade for black keys.

Tones in the Current Chord appear as Dots

Just as in the Guitar Palette, chord notes are shown as colored dots. Yellow dots represent the root of the Current Chord. White dots are other Chord Tones that lie within the Current Scale.

Tones outside the Current Scale are White & Black

All the scales in FretPet are 7-tone scales, so there will always be 5 tones left over that aren't colored blue. These tones will be left uncolored, white and black.

When chord tones appear on the white and black keys they are drawn in off-yellow or gray to indicate that they lie outside of the Current Scale.

Tones outside the Fret Bracket are Red

When the Fret Bracket is turned on in the Guitar Palette the Piano changes to show you which notes are actually available inside the bracketed range. Notes which lie outside this range are shown in a dark red.

In this mode only those Chord Tones which are actually played will be shown. Thus you will never see more than 6 dots on the Piano while the Fret Bracket is on.

Tickling the Ivories

• Click a piano key to hear a note. You can drag to play scales.
• Use command to hear only notes which are in key.
• Double-click to toggle a note in your chord.
• Triple-click to add a triad to the chord.
• Option-triple-click to remove a triad from the chord.