Re: Qwerty and Dvorak touch-typing.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

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[Phil Adamsak:]

>>From personal experience, I would guess your hands will adjust. Think first
>of saxophone players who double on several woodwinds, with great flexibility.
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   I play the piano, and don't get that confused with typing - but it's so
different that you couldn't confuse them anyway. I also play the organ
(although not at quite the same level of skill), but the keyboard is the same,
and you just have to realize that you have to hold the organ notes for their
full duration because you don't have the piano's sustaining pedal to help you
join notes. This results in a different fingering technique, and I have no
trouble with that and don't ever forget to do it when I play the organ, I
suppose because I'm just in a whole different "head-space" - but whether this is
analogous I don't know.
   If you mean the saxophone players double on different saxophones, that's
not really analogous, because the different saxophones would use the same
fingering patterns, and just apply them to different pitches or registers. The
same for clarinet and bass clarinet, flute and piccolo, oboe and cor anglais,
and so on. It would be more analogous if the players double on completely
different woodwind families - and I suppose there are people who do that.

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>My experience is with keyboards. At one time, before most of them became
>obsolete, I was competent on manual and electric typewriters, teletypes,
>Linotypes and PC's. There was no mental entanglement; it was all hand habit.
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   Those weren't all qwerty? I would have thought they were.

   Incidentally, how do you learn the Dvorak keyboard? I've never seen
"learn-to-type" books for the Dvorak keyboard, and surely you would need a
sufficient number of suitable exercises to learn with, designed to introduce the
keys one at a time. I'm sure I would never have learned the qwerty keyboard in
a week or so if I hadn't had a book with plenty of suitable exercises, and had
instead just tried to type by myself, using any keys as I needed them. Do I
have to just devise my own exercises, planning them so they introduce just a few
keys at a time? That would take quite a bit of time and ingenuity. (You know,
the Dvorak equivalent of "a sad lad had a fad" - that sort of thing, using just
the right keys at any given stage.)
   Does anyone know if there are Dvorak "learn-to-type" books available? Or
computer tutorials to do the same thing, for that matter?

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.