A piano's lesson... interface confuses information.

Today I am the proud owner of a new Korg SP200 digital piano! I've been playing it a bit today and it's a real joy. Having grown up with a piano in the house as a kid, I have missed having one around to just plunk away at for relaxation.

Although the piano is not my first instrument, it's definately the one that I find the easiest to communicate with. It's to do with having all that visual feedback from the keys whereas with a saxophone or guitar, you just don't get that. You can see what you're pressing and then associate this action with the result it produces – a sound.

The interface with a piano has direct mapping too – there's no dual functioned keys. One key does pretty much one thing 'affords' pressing. So, as a teaching aid, it is far superior to most any other instrument because you can visually see the structure of chords and melodies.

The downside to this is making a connection between the visual patterns learned on the keyboard and those one must learn to read musical notation on paper. These are unfortunately not the same. When there are no learned visual patterns within the interface (such as with the saxophone, because you can't see the keys when you're playing), the patterns within music notation can be more easily 'learned by route' and translated into actions made by the fingers.

Music notation isn't just any old information though... or perhaps it is... It's a whole language in itself comprising letters, numbers, punctutation, sentences, phrases and more. So learning this language is less difficult when you don't have to cope with visual feedback too... or is it? Imagine being able to see how your mouth makes sentences when you're trying to learn a language. Is there an instance where visual feedback isn't necessarily a good thing? I don't know. I fear I've flown up my own backside here.