"Keyboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes watching a chance to stop the uninteresting writing; or feels, suddenly, soft arms round one's neck, as a baby, strayed from her own domain, climbs unexpectedly up from behind and makes dashes at the typewriter keyboard. Such little living interruptions are too frequent to allow of these ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... quite stunned," said the Count as he left the house. "A child dancing on the keyboard would make ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... the piano, where Mr Armstrong, still in the clouds, was roaming at will over the chords, and laid his father's letter on the keyboard. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... over there in that corner; and be careful to stop her in time, I should hate to push a piano through one of my host's parlor walls just for the want of a little care. (They push until the piano stands against the wall on the other side of the room, keyboard in.) There! That's first-rate. You can put a camp-chair on top of it for the prompter to sit on; there's nothing like having the prompter up high, because amateur actors when they forget their lines, always look up in the air. Perkins, go sit out ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... on fiercely for some minutes more, leaning close over the keyboard, and throwing her very soul, as Elma could plainly see, into the tips of her fingers. Then, suddenly she rose, and came over, well pleased, to the sofa where Elma sat. With a motherly gesture, she took Elma's hand; she smoothed her dark hair; she bent down with a tender look, in those strange grey ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... phrase of passionate faith which the lonely, disheartened woman sings, looking up from the desert rock. Then her voice sank into the calm beauty of the "Ave Maria," now given with confidence in the Virgin's intercession, and the broken chords passed down the keyboard, uniting with the last note of the solemn octaves, which had sounded through the song like bells heard across ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... he devoured her with his eyes, from the golden crown of her rigidly motionless head to the heels of her shoes, the line of her shapely shoulders, the curves of her fine figure swaying a little before the keyboard. She had on a light dress; the sleeves stopped short at the elbows in an edging of lace. A satin ribbon encircled her waist. In an access of irresistible, reckless hopefulness he clapped both his hands on that waist—and then the irritating music stopped at last. But, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the woman who is to hold his mind. The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... beautiful drawing-room at Whitestone Hall sat Pluma Hurlhurst, running her white, jeweled fingers lightly over the keyboard of a grand piano, but the music evidently failed to charm her. She arose listlessly and walked toward the window, which opened out upon the wide, cool, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... the Expansion Interface is connected to the computer, it assumes that a Mini-Disk is connected. To use the Expansion Interface without a Mini-Disk, press the BREAK key on the TRS-80 keyboard. This will override the Mini-Disk mode and ...
— Radio Shack TRS-80 Expansion Interface: Operator's Manual - Catalog Numbers: 26-1140, 26-1141, 26-1142 • Anonymous
... to such an advantage. After all, her argument was reasonable and rational. A titillating sensation suffused his being. In fancy he saw the little dining-room, which adjoined her boudoir; he saw her at the piano, her white fingers tripping, as in the old days, over the keyboard; he heard her singing one of her gay and reckless songs; he saw her dainty feet tripping through the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still in the same direction, but he showed the way, and most of his pieces ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... not divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no stopping him. Nor was he an agreeable opponent. Torrents and cataracts of words poured ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... head means high, and on the neck, low," Johnny promptly finished his code. Having thus made a code keyboard of Bland's person, he settled himself with his ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... an exhaustive examination of the letters, and as Kennedy called off the various characteristics of each type on the standard keyboard we checked them up. It did not take long to convince us, nor would it have failed to convince the most sceptical, that both had come from the same ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... seemed quite unaffected by the dreadful avowal. She was still moving her hands at random up and down the keyboard. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... bright and fair" into a lower key, so as to make it suit her voice, thus proving, as her mamma said, that she had a thorough knowledge of the laws of harmony; not only did she do this, but at every pause added an embellishment of arpeggios from one end to the other of the keyboard, on a principle which her governess had taught her; she thus added life and interest to an air which everyone—so she said—must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Handel left it. As for her governess, she indeed had been a rarely accomplished musician: ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... anyone to spend his whole time there. There was none of the accumulation of property that would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia—a German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... facing north on the park, Was not homelike; the rooms seemed too sombre and dark To her eyes, sun-accustomed; the neighbors too near And too noisy. The medley of sounds hurt her ear. Sudden laughter; the cry of an infant; the splash Of a tenant below in his bath-tub; the crash Of strong hands on a keyboard above, and the light, Merry voice of the lady who lived opposite, The air intertwined in a tangled sound ball, And flung straight at her ear through ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... combinations. The student has previously learned the letters found in the copy and can identify them upon the keys of the typewriter. Scrutiny enables him to find any particular key, and in the course of a few hours be develops a certain awkward familiarity with the keyboard and acquires some speed by utilizing these familiar muscular movements and available bits of knowledge. All these prelearned movements and associations are brought into service in the early stages of improvement, and a degree of proficiency is quickly attained which cannot be exceeded ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... at my Faust Symphony. The three-keyboard instrument arrived yesterday from Paris. It might be well to take the opportunity of my Catalogue appearing at Hartel's to see about a special article on it in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... number of chords and sequences. Then come the rules for modulating from one key to another, and equal facility in all keys is insisted on. Monsieur Jaques-Dalcroze's pupils learn to improvise with definite thought and meaning, nothing unrhythmical is ever allowed, nor any aimless meandering over the keyboard. For these lessons the pupils are divided into small groups of not more than six in each, and twice a week these groups are ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... after a lingering glance out the front window, she picked up her last vase of flowers, a single branch of apple blossoms in a tall, green jar, and, crossing over to the grand piano so placed it that the sunlight shone full upon it. Then she stood for a moment looking thoughtfully at the open keyboard, which had a small sheet of music spread before it. Esther Clark next sat down at the piano and lightly ran her fingers over the keys so that it could scarcely have been possible for any one farther away than the adjoining hall to have heard her playing. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... magazine in which the matrices are stored. Each channel has at the lower end an escapement B to release the matrices one at a time. Each of these escapements is connected by a rod C and intermediate devices to one of the finger-keys in the keyboard D. These keys represent the various characters as in a typewriter. The keys are depressed in the order in which the characters and spaces are to appear, and the matricies, released successively from the lower end of the magazine, descend between the guides E to the surface of an ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... in such strict keeping with the music he was playing—a piece by W. Byrd, "John, come kiss me now"—and when it was finished, his fingers strayed into another, "Nancie," by Thomas Morley. His hands moved over the keyboard softly, as if they loved it, and his thoughts, though deep in the gentle music, entertained casual admiration of the sixteenth century organ, which had lately come into his possession, and which ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... required a strong man to ring them, these can be rung from an electric keyboard, and even when rung by hand require but little muscular power to manipulate them and call forth all the purity and sweetness of their tones. The quality of tone is something superb, being rich and ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... with a thirty-foot keyboard, forty-five octaves, and five hundred and twenty-two keys, which Mr. Alfred Butt will 'present' in 'Follow the Crowd' at the Empire Theatre, is now in course of construction. Six pianists will play it, and Mr. Irving Berlin, the composer of 'Watch Your Step,' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... each end of the line are identical. Each includes a keyboard like a piano manual, with a key for each letter or character. On each machine is a type wheel, which has the characters engraved in relief upon its face. With the wheel a "chariot" as it is termed also rotates. The type wheels at both stations are synchronized. When a key is depressed, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... little else, dear friend, when God sends a pretty fool to listen!" She looked up at him from the keyboard over which her hands were nervously wandering. "I ought to know," she said; "I also have listened." She laughed carelessly, but her glance lingered for an instant on his face, and her mirth did not sound quite spontaneous ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... 7—4.45 P.m. The first proper name ever set by this new keyboard was William Shakspeare. I set it at the above hour; & I perceive, now that I see the name written, that I either misspelled it then or ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... intonation brings the tones much nearer to the quality of the human voice. The instrument has been invented and patented by Mr. Colin Brown of Glasgow, Ewing lecturer on music. By the use of additional reeds and a most ingenious keyboard, he has succeeded in giving each key in perfect tune. The 'wolf' is banished altogether, without the privilege of a single growl. I do not need to say that the effect upon the ear is rich, and extremely ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... to Kate's welfare, joyfully sent her off, and the child spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing the Angel Adjutant of the future to win the hopeless and despairing of many ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... a place in the foreground of his consciousness. I heard Rubinstein play when a boy—what did his false notes amount to compared with his wonderful manner of disclosing the spirit of the things he played! Plante, the Parisian pianist, a kind of keyboard cyclone, once expressed the idea admirably to an English society lady. She had told him he was a greater pianist than Rubinstein, because the latter played so many wrong notes. 'Ah, Madame,' answered Plante, 'I would rather be able to play Rubinstein's wrong notes than all my own correct ones.' ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... "I can sing it, but it wants careful playing; the end is a sort of little duet between the voice and the organ. If you don't follow me exactly, the effect will be like this," and she showed what it would be on the mute keyboard. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... garments, Sarah Farraday, and sit in the dust. That fatuous note I sent you was a thin crust of bluff over an abyss of fright. Who am I to write a one-act play? I have sat here for eight solid horrible days with a fine fat box of extra quality paper untouched and the keyboard leering at me, and not a line, not a word, have I written! The hideous period of beginning to begin! I imagine it's like the tense moment in a football game, just before the kickoff, only those lucky youths are pushed and prodded into action, willynilly. If only a whistle would ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Miles could not turn the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb would normally have left its mark—and vice versa.... Before I forget it, I should also tell you that I found a master key hanging on the keyboard in the butler's pantry. Big houses, with their many locks, are usually provided with a master key, and Miles undoubtedly used that one to gain entrance into my room after ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... of the method he had invented. This method was based on the guide main, so I was put to work on it. The preface to Kalkbrenner's method, in which he relates the beginnings of his invention, is exceedingly interesting. This invention consisted of a rod placed in front of the keyboard. The forearm rested on this rod in such a way that all muscular action save that of the hand was suppressed. This system is excellent for teaching the young pianist how to play pieces written for the harpsichord or the first pianofortes where the keys responded to slight pressure; ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... in his best verses, and Milton at the keyboard of his organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought; it has become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure it gives us is unmixt, direct, like that from the smell of a flower or the flavor of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... splendidly achieved in the soft, shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortississimo, that represents the thunderous swoop of the eagle with ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Malines, The master of the bells unseen Has climbed to where the keyboard stands,— To-night his heart is in his hands! Once more, before invasion's hell Breaks round the tower he loves so well, Once more he strikes the well-worn keys, And sends aerial harmonies Far-floating through the twilight dim In patriot ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... certain famous bell ringer was engaged by the authorities to play the bells from the clavecin. This is a sort of keyboard with pedals played by hand and foot, fashioned like a rude piano. The work is very hard, one would think, but I have heard some remarkable results from it. In former times the office of "carilloneur" was a most important position, and, as in the case of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... relight it. He was putting together the stuff I'd transmitted in for the audiovisual newscast. Over across the room, the rest of the Times staff, Julio Kubanoff, was sitting at the composing machine, his peg leg propped up and an earphone on, his fingers punching rapidly at the keyboard as he burned letters onto the white plastic sheet with ultraviolet rays for photographing. Julio was an old hunter-ship man who had lost a leg in an accident and taught himself his new trade. He still wore the beard, now white, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... of the instructor, she found the simple chords of "Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin," she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all the othah things that ought to come first. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... little machine I got before I came down, with raised letters on the keyboard. If I progress at the rapid pace I have started, I'll be an expert before long. Mrs. Gusty was able to read five words out of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... consists of four lamps mounted in a vertical line as high as possible. Each lamp is double, containing a red and a white light, and these lights are controlled from a keyboard. A red light indicates a dot in the Morse code and a white light indicates a dash. The keys are numbered and lettered, so that the system may be operated by any one. Various other systems employing colored lights have ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the keys lightly and when he sang his voice seemed scarcely to carry across the room. There was a rapid passage on the keyboard, like the patter of a pony's hoofs in the distance, and ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... who produced an effect long desired by throwing his brush at a picture in rage and despair; of a musician who, after repeated failures in trying to imitate a storm at sea, obtained the result desired by angrily running his hands together from the extremities of the keyboard,—bear in mind that even this "luck" came to men as the result of action, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... service, his wonder was still more excited by the organist's performance on the barrel-organ, the doors of which were thrown open behind to let the sound fully into the church, by which the stops, pipes, barrels, staples, keyboard, and jacks, were fully exposed, to the wonderment of the little boys sitting in the gallery behind, and to none more than our young musician. At eight years of age he began to play upon his father's old fife, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Personal Educational Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... box behind the wall, his head just reaching the top of the egg, which was open all the way up the back. At the lower end of the figure, convenient to the hands of the performer, was the row of levers, like a little keyboard; and by striking different chords on the keys, any desired expression could be ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... day, so discordantly begun for Miss Betty, grew musical with her own laughter, answering the husky staccato of the vivacious newcomer. Nelson waited upon them at table, radiant, his smile like the keyboard of an ebony piano, and his disappearances into the kitchen were accomplished by means of a surreptitious double-shuffle, and followed by the cachinnating echoes of the vain Mamie's reception of the visitor's sallies, which Nelson ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Verkan Vall snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall," he identified himself. "Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild state, special emphasis domesticated nighthounds reverted to wild state ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... playing Chopin had died with Chopin; but I felt sure that evening, as I have felt sure since, that Chopin himself, aristocrat of the soul as he was, would have received Diaz as an equal, might even have acknowledged in him a superior. For Diaz had a physique, and he had a mastery, a tyranny, of the keyboard that Chopin could not have possessed. Diaz had come to the front in a generation of pianists who had lifted technique to a plane of which neither Liszt nor Rubinstein dreamed. He had succeeded primarily by ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... hands at the task of organ blowing. The church was open, and Monica was already waiting for them in the porch. She soon showed them how to work the bellows, and after telling them to stop and rest as soon as they were tired, seated herself at the keyboard and began her practice. Both the younger girls felt it a decidedly novel and interesting experience to be in the little space behind the pipes, working away at a long handle. As they took it in turns they were able to keep the organ going ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... what I had taken for the keyboard of the organ was no keyboard but only a slit, and one of the little Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels played and the world turned round and the organ made a noise and the people began killing one another and the two little ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom. But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty's 'cheres amies' to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... cocoa-trees and now more distressing to behold than the rest in their glacial, mute condition. In the background, before the piano, was the death-mask of the old diplomat, his mittened hands resting inert upon the keyboard, the yellowing tones of which were ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... and comfortably attained middle tones shall again be universally perceived. At the present moment our instrumental art has, in this particular, fallen under the tyranny of piano manufacturers and makers of wind instruments. When the keyboard of the grand piano has been made longer by a few keys, the composers think they are remaining "behind the times" if they do not immediately introduce these new high treble tones into their next work, and when the wind instruments have been enriched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... With the dawn of speech the child ceases to be an animal we cherish, and crosses the boundary into distinctly human intercourse. There begins in its mind the development of the most wonderful of all conceivable apparatus, a subtle and intricate keyboard, that will end at last with thirty or forty or fifty thousand keys. This queer, staring, soft little being in its mother's arms is organizing something within itself, beside which the most wonderful orchestra one can imagine is a lump of rude clumsiness. There will come a time ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the chap I was speaking to you about," said Captain Bob, pointing to a wounded Highlander, whose head was enveloped in a bandage. "He's a regular genius on the keyboard; that is why there are such a lot of chaps here to-night. He only blew in a couple of days ago from the brigade on our right when he heard we were lucky enough to ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... it, presents it to her? What makes that reticent, meditative, hard-favoured ancient, who is I believe a psychologist, what makes him so interested in observing Najib when he stands near the piano pointing anxiously to the keyboard? For the child enjoys not every kind of music: play a march or a melody and he will keep time, listing joyously from side to side and waving his hand in an arch like a maestro; play something insipid or chaotic and he will stand there impassive as ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... a formula of words which some genius had devised for the fingering practice it gave one on the keyboard, and Joe Harned had written it hundreds of times before, just as thousands of others had done, without giving a thought to its meaning, or the significance that the substitution of a ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... she had to learn the alphabet all over again in a new order, and this was fiendishly hard. She studied the touch-system with the keyboard covered, and her blunders were disheartening. Her deft fingers seemed hardly to be her own. They would not ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Mohammedans.] by the addition of a fourth string and a few changes in form, became the sweet-toned violin, the most important and expressive instrument of the modern orchestra. As immediate forerunner of our present-day pianoforte, the harpsichord was invented with a keyboard carried to four octaves and the chords of each note doubled or ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Harry Morgan thought to himself. He tapped out the number on the keyboard of the phone and waited for the panel to light up. When it did, it showed a man in his middle fifties with a lean, ascetic face and graying hair, which gave him a ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... took from the top shelf an excessively ornamented accordion,—the opulent gift of a reckless admirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze of papier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard, and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that it seemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. "You ought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie," said ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... sat down. Captain Eben took a figured handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The thin, nearsighted young woman who had been humped over the keyboard of the melodeon, straightened up. The worshipers relaxed a little and began to ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is the possibility of transmutation upon an internal and subjective impulse which makes possible the formation of synthetical judgments a priori. It is as if the organ were not only responsive to impressions upon its keyboard from without, but were also automotive and could originate harmonies in its own notes; and as if, moreover, it were endowed with consciousness so as to receive an intuition of both classes of music. The former would correspond to sensations, the latter to ideas; and we might ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... command a sergeant plugged in certain stops upon a keyboard and then when the Colonel, taking a hand telephone up from a table, had talked into it in German he ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... serious charge you make," he said, smiling grimly. "One that may cost you a great deal—it might cost you your life perhaps." He paused significantly, and there was a second outburst, this time from the younger men, which came so suddenly that it was as though Louis had played upon certain chords on a keyboard, and the sounds he wanted had answered to ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... tier in a belfry, the smallest highest, the great, ponderous bells of the bass notes lowest, are not free to swing, but are fixed to huge beams, and are sounded by clappers connected by a wilderness of wires to a keyboard which is played upon ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... typing all the time with my eyes on the keyboard, and I hadn't once glanced at the finished work. Now I looked at it I saw that she was right. I had been typing letters all along when I should have been printing figures. And then something queer about the letters struck me. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... till she gasps, not because she is unapt, but because she can't help it,—she is used to playing so, nobody ever taught her differently. I said to her mother and her that if I were her regular teacher, I would lock up all her music, cover the keyboard with a handkerchief, and make her practice both hands at first slowly on nothing but passages, trills, mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... names and spellings from the Chiefs of State link on the CIA Web site. The World Factbook is prepared using the standard American English computer keyboard and does not use any special characters, symbols, or most diacritical markings in its spellings. Surnames are always spelled with capital letters; they may appear ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... means that the person touching the keyboard, or performing computations, is the same as the person who initiates or consumes the computation. The emergence of personal computers, along with a host of other forces, such as ubiquitous computing, advances in interface design, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... with his new oratorio scheme. He had ordered a new organ for the theatre at a cost of L500, constructed so that he might have a better command of his performers, and he had also acquired another instrument, which Jennens calls a "Tubalcain"—in other words a set of bells played from a keyboard—which he intended to use in the scene in which the Israelites welcome David after his victory over the Philistines. It is curious that Handel should have dramatised the insanity of Saul just after he had himself ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fire. An airplane which is to be used for this work is specially fitted with a number of rocket tubes which project in all directions, so that it looks like a pipe-organ gone on a spree. The rockets, which are fired by means of a keyboard not unlike that of a clavier, are loaded with a composition containing a large percentage of phosphorus and are fitted with gangs of barbed hooks. If the rocket hits the balloon these hooks catch in the envelope and hold it there, while the phosphorus ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... music-room when the crowd had congested the hall. People were introduced to her, and sank down into the nearest chairs. Mrs Antrobus took up her old place by the keyboard of the piano. Everybody seemed to be expecting something, and by degrees the import of their longing was borne in upon Olga. They waited, and waited and waited, much as she had waited for a cigarette the evening before. She looked at the piano, and there was a comfortable murmur from her ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... especially commended for the disposition of its ornament, and the delicate but vigorous lines of the bracket beneath the keyboard, or what is technically ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... Alice, Blakeman passing the coffee, liqueurs and cigars, he was ready to answer any call. And thus it was that Thayor, amid general applause, led—or rather dragged—Jack triumphantly to the new grand piano, finally picking him up bodily and depositing him before the keyboard, where he held him on the stool with the grip of a sheriff, until this best of fellows raised his hands hopelessly and smiled to his ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... room, Captain Folsom saw the singer seated at a great square piano, a giant of a man with a huge shock of dark brown hair and ferocious mustaches, while a coal black negro, even huger in size, lolled negligently at one end of the keyboard, his red lips parted wide in a grin of enjoyment and ivory white teeth showing between, and at the other end of the piano, with his elbows planted on the instrument and his head pressed between his hands, stood or rather leaned a ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... dark-green velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it; more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R. Madame la Duchesse de Berri." Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards—a large girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing her hair in bands, and wearing ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... piano she sat down on the stool, while he took a small chair and established himself near the corner of the instrument, at the upper end of the keyboard. The shaded lamp cast a little light on both their faces, as the two looked at each other, and Margaret realised that she was not only very fond of him, but that his whole existence represented something ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... On the table were embroidery materials with which she had been working, and a lamp-shade half finished. A woman's magazine printed in a city four thousand miles away lay open at the fashion plates. There were other magazines, and many books, and open music above the white keyboard of the piano, and vases glowing red and yellow with wild-flowers and silver birch leaves. He could smell the faint perfume of the fireglow blossoms, red as blood. In a pool of sunlight on one of the big white bear rugs lay ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... feet and started across the room with great strides. My secretary's eyes were glued to the magic portrait. His fingers, looking like claws, hung suspended over the keyboard of the typewriter. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... absolutely unproducible. The reason of this is plain. The natural pains and pleasures of life, merely manipulated by the imagination and the memory, have too little variety or magnitude in them without further aid. Art without the moral sense to play upon, is like a pianist whose keyboard is ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... were on the keyboard. Hardly daring to lift them, she followed up the air with a wild variation and dropped back upon it again—not upon the air pure and simple, but upon the air as it might be rendered by a two-thirds-intoxicated coachful of circus bandsmen. The ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... days before a Mr. Bailey, who boarded in the house, and whose daughter was taking music lessons, had tried to purchase her piano, telling her that so fine a player as herself ought to have one with a longer keyboard. Ethie had thought so herself, wishing sometimes that she had a larger instrument, which was better adapted to the present style of music, but she could not bring herself to part with Aunt Barbara's present. Now, however, the case was different. Money ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... and, besides being a great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with the keyboard below on the level of the choir—truly with very beautiful judgment, since, the place being such that the monks were few, he wished that the organist should sing as well as play. And since this Abbot loved his Order, like a true minister and not a squanderer of the things ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... distant part of the building. All three instruments were under control of the organist at the console located upon the main floor of the entrance hall, and could be played either by hand or by music rolls manufactured by the Aeolian Company. The organ was equipped with an electric keyboard which permitted the playing of all three instruments or any single one, as the operator desired. The main instrument was contained in an artistic case, which, with its decorative ornament, was built by Charles and Jacob Blum, of New York city, and was ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... alcohol began creeping through his veins, softly, warmly, creating a glow about his heart. Vistas then opened up before him. Romance and adventure beckoned him. . . . Later, when the stimulant reached the centers of his brain, like the sentient fingers of a musician touching the keyboard of his soul, it produced golden harmonies from those keys whose tones are love, rhythm, color, appreciation of the beautiful: Inhibitions melted away in the amber light that enfolded him. Lovely things he had read or seen or thought and kept to himself for lack of expression formed ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... said Wilhelmine; 'I strike a chord and I achieve dissonance and wailing.' She threw back her head and pressed her fingers on the keyboard: this time a thin flute-like chord came forth, and Wilhelmine lifted her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so. The worst of it is, that Whitman must have known better. The man is a great critic, and, so far as I can make out, a good one; and how much criticism does it require to know that capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a dumb keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I could believe he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who wrote a book for a purpose? It is a flight beyond ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on it who can read—and can do it after only 15 minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but strike the keys and set type—merely one function; the spacing, justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is all done by the machine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other side of the central door, to the left of the visitor, is a cabinet of shallow drawers. On it is a telephone and the telephone directory. The corner beyond, and most of the side wall, is occupied by a grand piano, with the keyboard at the end furthest from the door, and a bench for the player extending the full length of the keyboard. On the piano is a dessert dish heaped with fruit ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... the musical script idea on which they are fundamentally based, in case you are unfamiliar with it. The sign '&' before a bar of music means that music is written in the treble clef—that is, all the notes following it are above the central C on the piano keyboard. Thus"—here he drew rapidly on a scrap of paper and passed a scrawled scale over ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... along her fingers on the keyboard as he bent to her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... of this: "It would be a great mistake to regard the mind as having before it the cerebral machinery, all nicely laid out, together with the acquired art of selecting and touching the right nervous elements in order to produce the desired motion, as a skilful player of the piano handles his keyboard." ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat—something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be—sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor—janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... served, that two had "gone by the cats"! We had, indeed, by this time attracted most of the cats in Gallipoli. They streaked through the rooms like chain lightning, and in the dead of night went galloping over the piano keyboard with sounds so blood-curdling that Suydam put his mattress on the sofa and his sleeping-bag on top of that, and, shutting himself in, defied them. The incomparable Levy was Italian by his birth and cheerfulness, Jewish on his father's side, Turkish by the fez he wore and a life ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Swell to Great, Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal, Choir to Pedal, Swell to Choir. New keyboards. New Pedal keyboard. New Drawstop knobs. New additional bellows. Five new Composition Pedals (three to Great organ, and two to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;—utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest triumph of reflection ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... didelfo. Keel kilo. Keen (sharp) akra. Keep teni, gardi. Keep silence silentigxi. Keeper gardanto. Keepsake memorajxo. Keg bareleto. Kennel hundejo. Kernel kerno. Kettle bolilo. Key sxlosilo. Key (of piano, etc.) klavo. Keyboard klavaro. Keystone cxefsxtono. Kick piedfrapo. Kid kaprido. Kidnap forsxteli. Kidney reno. Kill mortigi. Kill (animals) bucxi. Kilogramme kilogramo. Kilolitre kilolitro. Kilometre kilometro. Kin parenceco. Kind (species) speco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... considered what he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, was he conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard vaguely; and anon this ivory had voice and language; and for its master, and for some of his hearers, arose a vision. And it was as though in delicate procession, very slowly, listless with weeping, certain figures passed by, hooded, and drooping forasmuch as by the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... organ keyboard gave the only light in the chapel, and made an aureole about her head,— about the uncovered head of Olivia Gladys Armstrong! I smiled as I recognized her and smiled, too, as I remembered her name. But the joy she brought to the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... jerked out my guns, and reached around both sides of her to the pianner. I run the muzzles up and down the keyboard two or three times, and then shot ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... rocky eminences in the middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible piano, playing a ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the rococo manner of Gretry, contributes some fascinating dance measures, a minuetto, a polonaise, a gavotte, and a march. The table-music is wholly delightful. A brilliant episode is that of the fencing-master, who is musically pictured by a trumpet and pianoforte (with Max von Pauer at the keyboard). Nothing could be more dazzling. You hear the snapping of the foil in the hand of the truculent bully. The music that accompanies the tailor is capital, as are also the two dances—parodies of the dances in Salome ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... darkest corner of the room stood an old grand pianoforte, the top propped open, and the keyboard exposed as if it had been but recently employed. A chair with a ragged cushion on top of it was pushed a little back, and a sheet of music drooped from the stand towards the keys. My entrance had excited ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... by concentrating them. He found means to procure a spinet, and to conceal it in a garret, whither he went to play when all the household was asleep—without any guidance finding out everything for himself, and merely by permitting his little fingers to wander over the keyboard, he produced harmonic combinations; and at seven years of age he discovered that he knew how to play ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... good schottische!" exclaimed one of the Adeles, as the industrious lady from next door, after a final bang, withdrew her hands from the keyboard. "And how well ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the reader who may be interested enough to work out this little problem, along the lines of Shirley's deductions the arrangement of the so-called "Standard" keyboard is here shown, as it was on the "Number Four" machine of Warren's Remwood, and the duplicate machine ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... openly. She was still weak from her recent illness; her nerves were excited by the unusual pleasure she felt in playing once more with her husband, and this sudden shattering of her hopes of a renewed tenderness proved more than she could bear: she put her head between her hands upon the keyboard and broke into ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... retained its health he was at a loss when it developed ailments; and to these it was prone, being a machine of temperament and airs, inclined to lose spirit, to sulk, even irritably to refuse all response to Dave's fingering of the keyboard. Dave was sincerely startled when his son one day skillfully restored tone to the thing after it had disconcertingly rebelled. Sam Pickering, on the point of wiring for the mechanic who had installed his treasure, looked upon the boy with awe as ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... mark, scratch, line, stroke, dash, score, stripe, streak, tick, dot, point, notch, nick. print; imprint, impress, impression. [symbols accompanying written text to signify modified interpretation] keyboard symbols, printing symbols; [Symbols for emphasis], red letter, italics, sublineation^, underlining, bold font; jotting; note, annotation, reference; blaze, cedilla, guillemets^, hachure [Topo.]; [Special Characters list], quotation marks, "; double quotes, " "; parentheses, "( )"; brackets, "[ ]"; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of admiration fell from many lips. For an instant Helen Young's hands poised above the keyboard, then descended; and as spontaneously as a bird begins its love song to the blue, so Tessibel ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... seemed to ignore the fact that he had caused an interruption, and there was something in his voice that piqued the cantatrice, something that sent her back to the days of short frocks. She glanced nervously aside at Harry, who had struck a few notes and then dropped his hands from the keyboard. Twemlow's demeanour towards the blushing Ethel when Leonora brought her forward was much more decorous and simple. As for Harry, to whom his arrival was a surprise, at first rather annoying, Twemlow treated the young buck as one man of the world should treat another, and Harry's private verdict ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... respectively. By the combination of these lights letters can be formed, and so, letter by letter, a word, and hence an order, can be spelled out for the guidance of the ships of the squadron. These lamps are suspended on a stay in the rigging, and are worked by a keyboard from the upper bridge. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... years ago all type was set in this manner; but several machines have now been invented which will do this work. In one of the best of them the operator sits before a keyboard much like that of a typewriter. When he presses key a, for instance, a mould or matrix of the letter a is set free from a tube of a's, and slides down to its place in the stick. At the end of the line, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... glanced down at my hands. No delicateness there; certainly those fingers, though white enough nowadays, and long enough, too, were not made for fancy work and parlor tricks. They would have looked in place round the handle of a spade or the throttle of an engine, while Sam's seemed made for the keyboard of a piano. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... out of order, but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest as Mottram banged ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... favorite friends, was to play on the piano musical portraits of the company. At the salon of the Countess Komar, Delphine's mother, he played one evening the portraits of the two daughters of the house. When it came to Delphine's he gently drew her light shawl from her shoulders, spread it over the keyboard, and then played through it, his fingers, with every tone they produced, coming in touch with the gossamer-like fabric, still warm and hallowed for him from its contact ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... his cheeks, as he touched the keys softly and lingeringly. He could go no further than the refrain; he leant his elbows on the keyboard, and dropped his head upon his arms. The clashing notes jarred like a hoarse cry, then vibrated slowly away into a silence that was broken only by his sobs. He rose late the next day, after a sleep that was one prolonged nightmare, full of agonised, abortive striving after something ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... task accomplished, he returned A lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrine Of first beginnings and his father's youth. There, in the Octagon Chapel, with bared head Grey, honoured for his father and himself, He touched the glimmering keyboard, touched the books Those dear lost hands had ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of the dark effeminate face—of its rare smile! The girl forgot all pride, all discretion. 'Try,' she whispered, and as his hand, stretching along the keyboard, instinctively felt for hers, for one instant—and another, and another—she gave it ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drifting down as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the piano—large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... this revolution Is plain; the keyboard, though its tones are cold, Viewed as a means of rapid "execution" Endears itself to Turks both ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... Jane. "My education may be modern, on the whole; but it hasn't neglected the classics completely! Gentlemen forward!" she said, with a sudden cry, which sent Mrs. Bates's fingers back to the keyboard; "gentlemen forward to Mister Tucker!" Mrs. Bates pounded loudly, and Jane pirouetted up ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... outlasted the others for a moment or so, and then subsided into a regretful but gracious silence. For the next nine or ten minutes Ronnie held possession of the crowded room, a tense slender figure, with cold green eyes aflame in a sudden fire, and smooth burnished head bent low over the keyboard that yielded a disciplined riot of melody under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgot for the moment the regrettable trend of his subjects towards Parliamentary Socialism, the excellent ...
— When William Came • Saki
... at the harplike stool of the piano; but there she had to wait until the clock in the hall above struck some division of the hour for her guidance, and she rattled the brass rings that formed the handles of drawers on either side of the keyboard. Later, her fingers picking a precarious way through bass and treble, she heard Sidsall's voice at the door; the latter was joined by their mother, and they went out to the clatter of hoofs, the thin jingle of harness chains, where ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at that canvas. What a method! You are like an amateur pianist who tries laboriously to obtain tone, without having mastered the keyboard. One cannot blunder into great art. Only Englishmen make the attempt. You are a nation of amateurs. (He turns away, and sees a sketch on the L wall) Did ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... on the keys with the lightness of a feather. They rose and flashed and twinkled, and ran along the keyboard with swift, steel-like touch. The door at the end of the room opened softly. A tall man entered. He looked inquiringly at the grotesque green-and-white figure seated before the piano, then his glance met his wife's, and he sank into a big chair by the door, a pleased ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... a knowledge of the structural mysteries of drain-pipes than a reporter has of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The office mechanic fixes all that for him, and, so far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, an investigation of his faithful keyboard's internal arrangements would be in most cases an ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keyboard, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black-and-white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop—so still you could hear your hair ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... showing red and white respectively. By the combination of these lights letters can be formed, and so, letter by letter, a word, and thence an order, can be spelled out for the guidance of the ships of a squadron. The lamps are worked by a keyboard generally ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... will write rather quickly. Yet she will never succeed in reaching the ideal proficiency. In order to attain the highest point, she ought to have started with an entirely different method. She ought to have begun at once to use all her fingers, and, moreover, to use them without looking at the keyboard. If she had started with this difficult method she would never have succeeded in writing a letter the first day. It would have taken weeks to reach that achievement which the simpler method yields almost at once. But in plodding along on this harder road she would finally ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... runs and sonorous harmonies filled the room to overflowing, as if under the fingers of the player there were—not the keyboard of a piano—but the violins, flutes, cornets, trombones, bass viols and kettledrums of a ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... willingly go,' she said, 'but it is not necessary. I found two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... His life seemed to have drawn near to eternity; every thought, word, and deed, every instance of consciousness could be made to revibrate radiantly in heaven; and at times his sense of such immediate repercussion was so lively that he seemed to feel his soul in devotion pressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register and to see the amount of his purchase start forth immediately in heaven, not as a number but as a frail column of incense or as a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the brink of a fearful and unprecedented experience—an experience that would not leave me as it found me. This strange struggle with myself taxed all my powers; the sweat started out on my forehead. At last the moment came when I could struggle no longer. I laid my hand on the keyboard, and pushed myself round on the stool. There was a momentary dazzle before my eyes, and after that I saw plainly. My hand, striking the keys, had produced a jarring discord; and while this was yet tingling in my ears, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... difficulties involved in reading a full score are: first, training the eye to read from a number of staffs simultaneously and assembling the tones (in the mind or at the keyboard) into chords; and second, transposing into the actual key of the composition those parts which have been written in other keys and including these as a part of the harmonic structure. This latter difficulty may be at least partially overcome by practice ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... many levers, standing in thick, shining ranks. It perfectly resembles an organ in some great church, if it were not that these rows of numbered and indexed handles typify something more acutely human than does a keyboard. It requires four men to play this organ-like thing, and the strains never cease. Night and day, day and night, these four men are walking to and fro, from this lever to that lever, and under their hands the great machine ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... instances of artists who, later, have successfully adopted roles demanding another range than the one needed for their earlier efforts. But it is an open question whether the performer's instrument really changed. It must either have been wrongly classified at one of the two periods, or the vocal keyboard—so to speak—transposed a little higher or lower. The character of the instrument remains the same; a viola strung as a violin would still retain ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... carefully in the embossed type that the Maestro had been at such pains to learn and teach. Something like a sob shook the old musician. He raised clenched, trembling fists above his head, and brought them down, a shattering blow, upon the keyboard. Then he sat still, his face buried in his arms on the shaken piano. Felicia, lying stiff and wide-eyed in the great bed above, heard the crash of the hideous discord, and shuddered. She had been trying to remember the stately, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... with her fingers from one end of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. Then, without any more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle of Prague," that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of china had been lifted from the lower shelves of the china closet, and placed upon the table, the window seats, and even the piano boasted two dainty cups that the visitor, whoever it might be, had placed upon the keyboard. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... illustrations. In piano playing, the stimuli are the notes as written in the music. We see the notes occupying certain places on the scale of the music. A note in a certain place means that we must strike a certain key. At first the response is slow, we have to hunt out each note on the keyboard. Moreover, we make many mistakes; we strike the wrong keys just as we do in typewriting. We are awkward, making many unnecessary movements, and the work is tiresome and fatiguing. After long practice, the speed with ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... hands of the alarm clock perched directly in her line of vision. Czerny, too, was punctuated with quick little forays between notes, into a paper bag of "baby pretzels" at the treble end of the piano, often as not lopping over on the keyboard. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and solemnly rolled up his sleeves. His comrades eyed his every move closely. He spat on his hands, approached the piano, and glared fiercely at the keyboard. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... said he himself had never seen the ocean, but to his mind it was like this, and he began to toss his arms wildly about. Haydn tried every way he could think of to represent the ocean, but Kurz was not satisfied. At last he flung his hands down with a crash on each end of the keyboard and brought them together in the middle. "That's it, that's it," cried the manager and embraced the youth excitedly. All went well with the rest of the opera. It was finished and produced, but did not make much stir, a fact which was not displeasing to the composer, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... traveling swiftly up and down the keys, rising above them to an extravagant height and pouncing down upon them again, those predatory hands that had pounced on the spoils of Susa! They began, in a moment, to flutter lightly over the upper end of the keyboard. It was extraordinary what a ripple poured as if out of those hands. Magin himself bent over to listen to the ripple, partly showing his face as he turned his ear to the keys. He showed, too, in the lessening gloom, a smile Matthews had never seen before, more extraordinary than ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... must be spelled out in the ardois, as they require more than four elements, which is the limit of the ardois keyboard. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... fingers above the keyboard—brought them down on a fine chord of the Chopin prelude, and for one instant Kirk felt coursing through him a feeling inexplicable as it was exciting—as painful as it was glad. The next moment the chord died; the old man was again the gentle ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... her as for a child, and she laughed like the child she was. For her amusement he even went to a piano and played, with blundering three-chord accompaniment, a song or two. He played jokes on the keyboard. He revealed none of the self-consciousness that he manifested before Charity when he exploited his little ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes |
