12. The RR Janko Classic

Our RR Janko Slim keys are already a success story, we've been selling DIY kits to many countries around the world and a community of Janko players is beginning to grow. And the most important thing: The keys are such a joy to play, I simply love how ergonomic they are and isomorphism is really rewarding - whatever you practice in one key, can immediately be applied to all other keys as well!

But of course, the journey goes on - a DIY kit and double-sided tape can't be the end of the story. Wouldn't it be great if we could build a fully integrated Janko keyboard that simply works out of the box? There have been some attempts to build complete Janko keyboards before and unfortunately, all of them failed, most likely because it's simply a lot of work and very expense to build a new keyboard from scratch. So we wanted to start by reusing existing midi controllers and only exchange the keys.

Luckily, nowadays, whenever you need to construct a certain form, you can simply 3D print it and see if it works, and that's exactly what we did. After trying out various midi controller keyboards, we found the Midiplus keyboard to be a very good candidate - it has a nice action and it's pretty well suited for replacing keys.

Finding the right key layout

Now the question was: How should the layout look like? While I personally really appreciate the slim key layout, based on several comments, I felt that it would be easier for many people to really understand the Janko layout and to be open to try it out themselves if the keys were wider and closer to the orignal Jankó layout.

Now the challenge was to find the right key dimensions and the right numbers of rows. As always, it's finding a compromise between several rivaling criteria: Too few rows hurt isomorphism, but too many rows become visually complex and confusing, and fingerings become less unique. And more than five rows anyways physically is not really feasible: Since we have to work with a normal lever action, more than five rows would lead to a too high difference between the first and last row - both in terms of resistance and of key travel.

In order to get an idea, I went back to my basement to get my good old DIY tools and once more I was in the pionieering mood of the first days when we started the project.

From the slim keys, I was used to playing on four rows. I like four rows, they are basically the minimum number of rows that allow to have the same chord shapes in all keys and are visually still manageable.

While it was nice to have some more width to the keys, I felt the disadvantage of this key layout that initially led me to developing the slim key layout: Since you can't use the space between two keys (like the space between two black keys on a normal piano), some chords feel rather awkward to play, they are not very ergonomic. I wanted to know whether five rows could solve this problem.

The five-row version felt interesting. It indeed solved some of the ergonomics problem. Instead of playing chords over just three rows, here you could play them over four rows (and thus you need five rows to transpose them to all keys), which allowed more comfortable hand positions, especially for seventh chords. But it had some disadvantages too: Visually this layout is significantly more overwhelming than four rows and fingerings are much less unique. You often have several options, and depending on which option you choose, you might have a better or worse starting point, depending on what comes next. And the keys were pretty small.

I even tried to build a hybrid between wide keys and slim keys to combine the strenghts of both worlds.

But even though this layout actually improved ergonomics significantly, it was ugly as hell and in fact visually even more confusing than five rows, so I discarded the idea right away.

I was torn between four and five rows and I even was tempted to experiment with only three rows, just for the sake of simplicity.

But I not only questioned the number of rows but also the key shape itself, so I visualized several different key shapes to get an idea.

While allowing to arrange the keys in a slightly more compact way and providing some extra space between keys, these layouts again increased visual complexity and I was convinced that the only way to make the Janko widely accepted is to reduce complexity as much as possible and make it optically appealing.

In the meantime, Peter was inspecting the interior of the Midiplus keyboard and experimenting with 3D printing the keybed basis as well as the key tops. Since it was hard to choose which version we'd like to build (we even had multiple four-row versions), we simply decided to try out all of them. The first version still looked a bit clunky, but it helped a lot to get an idea how the keys would feel.

You can see four rows with longer keys, four rows with shorter keys, five rows and three rows. Three rows was immendiately out, it didn't work at all. Four rows with longer keys made it easier to play with the thumb on the same row as the longer fingers which makes some scales more comfortable to play. But generally, distances were becoming too long and I didn't like the fact that the keys were exceeding the keyboard. So the remaining choice was between four shorter rows or five rows.

Four or five rows?

I was going back and forth between four and five rows. At some point, I decided to go for five rows because of the improved ergonomics of wide chords, so I returned the keyboard to Peter who built a complete five-row unit.

Peter significantly improved his 3D printing technique and the keys became prettier and prettier and also smoother. This time the full keyboard was not only good for some testing but would allow to play music, so I was really excited to receive it.

Unfortunately, this excitement was only short-lived. This time I had the chance to try out various chord progressions and melodies. And while it's true that the five rows make wider chords more ergonomic, changing between different chords in different inversions, always finding the most ergonomic positions sometimes involves jumping around quite a bit. And even more importantly, a normal minor chord never feels really good. Either you have to play it over only two rows, which feels pretty cramped, or you have to play it over four rows requiring to stretch your fingers quite a bit which is also not ergonomic. And lastly, the fact that having five rows destroys the uniqueness of fingerings was more severe than I aniticipated. It significantly increased the mental load while playing.

The winner

After having made these experiences, I changed my mind and decided to go for four rows. Ok, some wider seventh chords need a bit practice to get used to them. But all triads and their inversions feel very good, distances are comfortable, the layout is visually much simpler and less intimidating. And it just feels very intuitive. You fingers know immediately where to go, there is no ambiguity.

Peter did an amazing job with designing the key shapes, processing the surface of the material to have a good feel and improving the keybed more and more so at the end it felt exactly like the original keybed of the Midiplus.

So here it is, our RR Janko Classic, available with four or six octaves or the full 88 keys, available in the Reinert-Piano online shop. After all these years, finally a Janko keyboard is available for purchase! May it give many people the chance to play isomorphic key layouts and inspire them to make beautiful music on it!