Keyboard man......

....versus string man.
Yrs trly has nine years of classical piano training.
It was drudgery. Arpeggios and Muzio Clementi.
As such I’m a keyboard man.
W-X-X-I, the publicly-supported classical music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to, played a violin concerto this morning (Monday, October 11, 2010).
“Not this kid!” I thought.
“That’s string music. I’m a keyboard man, harpsichords and pianos and pipe-organs.”
My hairdresser has an Android smartphone.
He has an app that displays virtual strings.
Strum it, and guitar-strings sound.
Ugh!
I’m not impressed. I’m a keyboard man.
That always directs my musical tastes.
Keyboard concertos always seem doable — or so it seems.
Order is at work too.
The keys play certain definable tone frequencies.
That was not true of a violin fretboard.
The tone-frequency emitted is a function of where you fingered the string.
You could be sharp or flat. (Your ear would tell you.)
A keyboard wasn’t that way.
Keys sounded specific tones; you were never sharp or flat.
Unless your instrument was out of tune.
But that wasn’t your fault — it wasn’t a function of where you fingered.
Bring in the piano-tuner.
A keyboard could also be stroked much faster than strings — or so it seemed.
It took a Jascha Heifetz to play arpeggios on a violin.
But even the average dolt, like me, could do arpeggios on a piano.
Ya need Yo-Yo Ma to convey emotion out of a cello, but even I could convey emotion with a Steinway D-10 concert-grand — at least to myself.