An unconventional approach to piano

RIP What you call "obstructing" it is the very heart and soul of fluent piano playing, which I started to do when I met my current teacher

Amen to that. I have to look at my hands the most when playing only the white keys -- there's no good point of reference to feel my way around (proprioception). In the early stages of learning the piano (different key sigs, etc), I felt the opposite way, but the symmetrical topography is invaluable.

That being said, I'd be intrigued to try this curvy keyboard and am open to being wrong, but my intuition feels like it would be much more difficult to feel my position (even with practice) as easily as a traditional keyboard.

FWIW, I wouldn't be interested in a piano controller that doesn't have a premium hammer action. I have synths and appreciate the benefits of synth action in some cases, but would never be my preference for a piano controller. Dynamic range is too limited with any synth action I've tried.

PASHKULI Ok, you have chosen the well paved path, with lots of teachers who have walked it.

I wouldn't call Phil Best's (Del's instructor) methods a well-paved path by any stretch. You could be innovative, but also keep in mind this could just be Dunning-Kruger if you aren't a fluent pianist yourself. Playing the piano is a physical skill. Not something that can be deeply understood theoretically. Imagine trying to reinvent the shoe while not having fully mastered walking around, and then trying to sell it to athletes.

Not saying it can't be done or there isn't plenty of room for innovation here, but you might consider involving a fluent pianist with your prototyping.

CyberGene I know no musician who is obsessed about symmetry

I don't know if I would call it an obsession, but symmetry is an important part of the approach that @RIP, @LynnS, and I have been studying from Phil Best.

To be fair, he's the only virtuoso I know of (although he claims he knows others) who builds a tonal foundation on the symmetrical structure. He does have an impressive repertoire (link) which he claims to have learned primarily by leveraging his unique approach.

His approach to tonality is more about noticing symmetry as you learn to physically "walk around" the keys in 3D space, until you can intuitively touch every tone the same way you'd touch your nose, ears, eyes, etc. without thinking about it. Much like learning how to use your body as a baby/toddler (hundreds of hours of improvisation/observation). On the keys, it can be advantageous to (eventually subconsciously) observe the symmetrical structure to keep track of where you're grabbing hold.

FWIW, I've made some breakthroughs with his approach, but only by putting in lots of work.

Mindbullets hmm, I've only heard Phil Best in relation to Pianoteq and only heard him playing jazz which wasn't great and I always thought he was an amateur because that's how his jazz impros sound. But now that you mentioned him, I opened his YouTube and it seems he's mainly a classical musician.

I don't know much about his teachings but TBH I'm really skeptical about people who teach some new and unorthodox stuff. Is he well accepted in the teachers community? Does he have any famous students and success stories? Because his main YouTube page is a bit pretentious and more influencer-like rather than neutral and humble which is what I usually expect from teachers.

CyberGene
Sorry, it was not addressed to me but I also checked that guys (Phil Best) YouTube channel and all I can see is just "beautiful words" and almost "esoteric" use of words and voice tone (the only thing missing was a mandala tapestry on the wall and some thick wax candles).
He is a pianist, no doubt, and he tries to get students and get paid – as many pianist have done, incl. Chopin.
I am in no position to know how to play piano, let alone to teach, but to me it seems he is just using "emotional" descriptions to invoke some kind of assurance for the student they are "in good hands". Could be a great strategy especially if one is into teaching as a job role.
Still, I have not found anything important in his talks about the symmetry of the piano keys (two in fact) which is valuable for me as a (potential) student. On the other hands, the .pdf files (and some related) video links he offers on his website witth regards to those subject are not really expensive ($3~$7).
About two years ago I bought one online teacher's 'teaching materials (pdf, midi, video)' just to find out the .pdfs were converted from his single channel midi files as scores and his videos showed generic things one could find in any other YouTube piano video, and he did not even have velocity dinamcs nor pedal CC data. Worst waste of $10 in my life.

I might pull the trigger again for this Phil Best and hope for the best (pun intended).

CyberGene Yeah that's fair enough. He referenced a student in passing once who is a professional concert pianist, but I didn't ask for more details, and the only success stories I've heard are just chatting with some other students about their observations.

Personally, it has helped my improvisation and rhythm, though the rhythm could also have been solved with something like Takadimi or some other rhythmic solfege. I believe his general approach to rhythm is very common in Indian music education.

The symmetry aspect unlocked some interesting observations about the way composers like Chopin will sort of "goof around" with it in doodles like Fantasie Impromptu, and it's all over his Ballade in Gm also. I don't have an expansive repertoire and couldn't comment on how often it appears elsewhere. I'm working on Massanet's Thais Meditation at the moment and happen to see it the couple of places where it isn't in a straightforward key signature. It helped me connect the dots on passages that made no logical harmonic sense to me previously, now I can often see them "fractaling" around/through the circle of 5ths symmetrically. Useful for improv/composition, especially to take different paths between harmonies than I otherwise would have used. I still feel like I'm learning and developing, but will abandon it if I ever feel that I stall out.

I'm not saying it's for everyone (it's definitely not). I'm still on the improvisation phase and still learning my way around. But it's been fun and things have gotten much easier to play intuitively.

To answer more in details some of your questions not covered by @Mindbullets

CyberGene I opened his YouTube and it seems he's mainly a classical musician.

I think it's fair to say that he is, however he considers himself more of a pop one, of that very-light-jazz style that's really pop-rather-than-jazz which might have been why you considered him so.

CyberGene Is he well accepted in the teachers community?

He had a traditional musical education which he hated, so he pretended to do what he was taught whereas he did not (for example: practicing scales) instead "inventing" his own way to do things which is what he teaches. That was very successful for him (he won piano competitions, played in concerts with orchestras and be paid for it, etc). He was hired to teach in a conservatory for a while, but quit because he could not stand by how music is taught and made (think beat machines, quantization, note editing even in classical recordings and that sort of stuff -- on that I have to say that I strongly agree with him). He considers himself an outsider, a maverick. Given what I know about the teacher "community" (or lack thereof) I would say that what he teaches would not be accepted if he insisted in presenting it with the "dissident" approach he does. But if one looks at the substance (rather than the form) of what he does teach, I can easily see that what he teaches is not far from a traditional "school of thought" that music message comes before everything (e.g. before technique) and one should be able to do that first. I had two teachers who tried that approach with me before Phil, so I see that similarity. The difference is that Phil is very deliberate and his "musical message first" is very clear and his maverick-presentation is really helpful from a student point of view. The other two teachers of "musical message first" approach that I had could demonstrate musicality by their playing, but could not explain where that musicality came from, let alone teach a student like myself to develop it! The most they could teach was mocking what they were doing, or teaching hope that "fake it till you make it" was a viable strategy. Quite the opposite of Phil who (in a nutshell) says that "music message first" comes from intention, focus on the rhythmic structure (check his many public videos about that) and a naughty "I don't care how it goes" attitude. I mean, there's more, but in a nutshell that's it, and for me it's extremely effective. I hope to be able to demonstrate a "before and after", by relearning a few pieces of those I recorded earlier to show the difference, but I'm not there yet. Even if for some reasons I will be unable to do so, I'm happy because learning to play the piano with him is expressive and exhilarating, whereas before learning anything was "blood and sweat" and I kept doing it only because I was (hopelessly) hoping to achieve an objective that never came.

CyberGene Does he have any famous students and success stories?

Not famous ones AFAIK but he has success stories like the one above. As they say, I'm not authorized to speak about others.

CyberGene because his main YouTube page is a bit pretentious and more influencer-like rather than neutral and humble which is what I usually expect from teachers.

He has definitely a strong personality and he does try to "get through" in YT. I don't like the latter, but I don't hold that against him. I don't care about personality: everyone's got their own, and we just have to learn to live with the people we care about. I can see how some people may find him "not someone they want to deal with", and I think that's totally fine.

For the rest, I agree with what @Mindbullets wrote

PS: should we split this discussion in a different thread? I know it has been sparkled by the keyboard layout, but we drifted far from it

RIP should we split this discussion in a different thread? I know it has been sparkled by the keyboard layout, but we drifted far from it

Sure, why not. I think you can do it too, since it’s under DIY. I can then edit the tags if you can’t (I think you should be able to edit them at least once though, that’s an interesting experiment).

CyberGene Sure, why not.

I guess the argument for "not" was that some messages were tangled with that other conversation with that weird layout. I did my best to remove only and all the least tangled messages.

CyberGene I think you can do it too, since it’s under DIY.

Correct, I just did it.

CyberGene I think you should be able to edit them at least once though

Not sure if I missed something hidden somewhere in the UI, but I saw no way to do so.

@Mindbullets @LynnS in case you would like to continue this conversation, I moved it on this separate thread, rather than leaving it buried inside that one about the keyboard layout