Yes that should work but it would be limited to only major and natural minor scales, nothing more exotic. Which I assume is what the OP is after - else why do it.
But of course there are a whole bunch of scales that won’t map properly to the white keys because those scales have more (or less) notes than the 7 that will fit on the keys.
Another possible approach would be to remap the keys using a Drum Map. But that has its own set of issues.