[Steve Giedosh]

Hey Daren

To answer your question, no I don’t think it’s a big adaptation as it’s far easier to play than the normal piano layout.

The Janko layout, invented by Paul Von Janko in the late 1800s was (at the time) made to be a replacement for the standard 7 on 5 piano but never really took off as piano was a well established institution at that point in history. It’s a isomorphic layout that allows uniform fingerings and shapes for all material played on the keyboard. It’s like every key is as easy to play as “C”.

You have two rows:

C D E F#/Gb G#/Ab A#/Bb

and

C#/Db D#/Eb F G A B

These two rows make the two wholetone scales and when you stack them on top of each other you have a symmetrical layout.

Basically once you learn something, be it a scale, chord, interval or melody in one key, it’s played the same in all other 11 keys. This effect of uniformity and moving of shape is exactly the same as guitar, bass or any other stringed instrument. Couple this logical and streamlined layout with the punch and portability of the melodica and you’ve got yourself a very powerful musical tool. I came across this layout in grad school after attending a Dr. Barry Harris lecture which lead me to research alternative musical tools, myself being a bassist and dyslexic this layout was a natural and logical conclusion to harmony and something I wish I had in my undergrad piano and theory classes. If you are familier with how Dr. Barry Harris talks about harmony and theory, then this layout will make perfect sense because it’s basically just that.

I’ve put together a short video to demonstrate this simple and powerful layout.