Monotype Recorder: A musician at the keyboard

[benwiggy]

There's a lovely site that contains PDF scans of copies of The Monotype Recorder, which was a magazine produced by Monotype in the UK from 1902 to 1969 about printing.

https://metaltype.co.uk/wpress/library/ ... -recorder/

One article in Volume 29, No 234 (admitted quite difficult to read from a bad scan) is entitled "A Musician at the Keyboard", and compares the technique and skills of playing the piano with the technique and skills to use a Monotype typesetting machine!

https://www.metaltype.co.uk/downloads/mr/mr_29_234.pdf

"The exercises set out for the various fingers must be practised slowly and conscientiously, to engrave a clear and accurate record on the brain, to enable a true and faithful reproduction of a "good record" when operating at high speed. The keys on the Monotype keyboard offer sufficient resistance for the fingers to rest lightly upon them. As shown in illustration 4, the value of this support to the fingers is enormous, ensuring efficiency in rapid setting where the use of capitals and small capitals are in great demand. The first essential is to learn the arrangement of the keys and the fingers controlling the different keys and by slow and correct practice it will soon be possible to memorise the fingering and so eliminate a good amount of the tedious mechanical drill; having engraved positions of the keys on the memory, the result will be surprising. The correct position of the fingers on the Monotype keyboard is similar to that of the fingers on the piano forte keyboard when playing chords, shown in illustration 2. The fingertips should be placed on the keys and slightly spread out, so they will rest on their respective keys, with the thumbs resting on the spacebar."

I suspect there's nothing here that won't be evident to any piano player who uses a computer keyboard for typing, but it's interesting nonetheless.

(Background music: Leroy Anderson's Typewriter, of course.)

[John Ruggero]

That article brought back memories (bad ones) of all the materials I read in my youth about piano technique. Matthay, Breithaupt, Cortot, Levinskaya, etc. The vague descriptions, with just enough truth to them to befuddle the reader and throw them completely off the track; the statements of physical impossibilities like "complete independence of the fingers" scorned by Chopin and the intense quest for which will lead one to tendonitis; "curving the fingers", which leads to a lifetime of tension in the hands and inability to play rapidly etc. etc.

And it is the same on a computer keyboard as on a piano keyboard.