Several of my friends know a little bit of it, I've heard a lot more to it than this (but can't remember how it goes), and I don't know the name of the song, except I'm sure it's not "Chopsticks" or "Heart and Soul."



Oh, in case you didn't see, I took a few creative liberties with the extension of the keyboard range. Anyone know of a piano (not digital) that exists on which I could play this? I think I may run out of keys on the Rubenstein R-371.

I've only really heard this piece being called "Knuckles", or "the Knuckle Song" or something like that because of the fact that beginners tend to play the first line with their knuckles...

I am not sure that there is ANY kind of musical instrument that would have the range to facilitate playing this piece! Besides, those extremely low bass notes marked 15vb would sound like a fairly unpleasant and inarticulate thud anyway, plus i would imagine that there are few people with arms long enough to even REACH those notes once you have lowered them 2 octaves as marked!

I think some organs might be able to play it.

Also, some digital pianos have an octave shift / transpose function that would partially facilitate playing it (except you couldn't play both parts at the same time on it.)

It is within the general MIDI range of 128 notes, though - lowest note (in MIDI) is C-1 and highest note is G9 (with C4 being middle C, for reference, and octave numbers changing at every C as you go up the scale). The lowest and highest notes in this song so far are Db-1 and Gb9.

I might be able to reach those notes, though. I can just about reach an extra 2 octaves past each end of a sub-standard 88-note piano, simultaneously. It's a bit of a stretch, though.

Then, there's the problem of getting the piano in my house. Just the keyboard, with 128 keys (MIDI range), would be approximately 69.25" wide. And, considering that I wouldn't mind the speaking length of A0 to be at least 16 feet (with a long enough backscale to make Del Fandrich happy) to get a good sounding low bass tone... it might not fit.

Of course, there is, too, the problem of getting the notes at the high end to sound good. Considering that a normal piano at C8 (4186Hz not accounting for stretch) has a very short sustain, F#9 (11840Hz) might sound like a stacatto plink. My proposal, for the piano with which to play it, is use much thinner wire, like 0.012" for example, longer speaking length, and maybe 5 strings per note. I wonder if this might produce a longer sustain?

I've never heard of a name for this song. Piano students love it. In fact it was performed for me today in a lesson. A parent taught it to my student.

Keith
http://www.keithphillips.net
http://www.keithphillips.net/SleepyRiverStudio.htm
http://www.freepianoresourses.com