Good point, WLD!

As to the black keys on the piano "chiming" or sounding brighter, there is sometimes a simple mechanical factor involved. One of my music profs at the Cornish School of the Arts covered this. Compared with, say, a bloody-great concert grand sitting on a concert hall stage someplace that's frequently played by the likes of Van Cliburn or Andre Watts, most home-based pianos aren't played quite as thoroughly. Lesser skilled pianists tend to avoid pieces containing lots of sharps and flats (black keys). One of the results of this is that the felt hammer that are actuated when the player strikes a black key tends to be far less worn than the others, gives the string a crisper blow, and the tone produced is a tad brighter than those produced by the more frequently used keys on which the business end of the felt hammer is worn a bit.

If a person who says they can tell a black key by its sound can still do it with a piano that has been recently tuned and had the felts replace might be an interesting challenge. My guess is that they probably couldn't.

Don Firth