Step 1: The layout of black and white keys has been standard on most piano and keyboard instruments for centuries, but how do you find your way around it? With 88 keys, a full-size piano keyboard ...

Play a note, any note — on your piano, your harp, your synthesizer, your kazoo. University of Delaware junior David Krall can tell you exactly which note you’re playing and which octave it lives in.

Both light and sound travel as waves, with characteristics that allow people with typical vision and hearing to perceive and categorize them when they reach their eyes and ears: “That’s a small red ...