The Old Piano
by Alex Hiemstra
Title
The Old Piano
Artist
Alex Hiemstra
Medium
Photograph
Description
The old Piano, it sounds like it looks...
The piano (an abbreviation of pianoforte) is a musical instrument played using a keyboard.[1] It is widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music, accompaniment and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.
A piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, and a row of black and white keys (52 white keys and 36 black keys). The strings are sounded when the keys are pressed down, and are silenced when the keys are released. The note can be sustained, even when the keys are released, by the use of pedals at the bottom of the piano.
Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike strings. The hammers rebound, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency.[2] These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that more efficiently couples the acoustic energy to the air. The sound would otherwise be no louder than that directly produced by the strings. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration and the sound. Despite the fact that a piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet). See the article on piano key frequencies for a picture of the piano keyboard and the location of middle C. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte (PF), the Italian word for the instrument (which in turn derives from the previous terms gravicembalo col piano e forte and fortepiano). The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate "soft" and "strong" respectively,[3] in this context referring to the variations in sound volume the instrument produces in response to a pianist's touch on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, and the louder the sound of the note produced.
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August 21st, 2014
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