A keyboard that uses a different arrangement of keys than the conventional piano/organ style keyboard employed by most synths. Although the concept of alternate keyboards isn't unique to synths, they are generally impractical to implement on instruments that are not electronic, and much of the work done on alternate keyboards has occurred since about 1995. Generally, the goal of an alternate keyboard is to (1) create a key layout such that the fingering for a given chord remains the same when it is transposed to a different key, or (2) provide a practical means of playing alternate scales, including scales that include microtones.