Piano’s are also called PIANOFORTE, French Piano, German KLAVIER.

The vibration of the strings is sent to a soundboard. A soundboard can also be called a BELLY. It is a thin plate of wood or a stretched membrane lying right under the strings of a stringed instrument. When the vibrations of the strings vibrates, the strings vibrate in response. The soundboard’s shape and size and materials in and on it, effect the instruments tone. If the soundboard for example were to small, then the low notes would be unstable.

In stringed instruments, a piece of elastic wood sends the vibrations to the string to the main part. In the Pressure Bridge, the string is fastened to one end of the tuning knob (peg), or to the wrest pin, and is fastened to the other end of the pin or tailpiece also.

The hammers that hit the strings are put to a mechanism lying on the far ends of the keys. The way the mechanism works is to quicken the move the hammer, get it as it rebounds from the strings and hold it in place for the next attack. Modern hammers are covered with felt, but earlier hammers were covered in leather in the place of felt. The piano has wire strings that make noise when pushed by felt-covered little hammers working in the keyboard.

The modern piano had a cast-iron frame, which is able to put up with the big tension of the strings. Earlier pianos had wood frames, so it could only be lightly hit. So modern pianos are much louder than the older ones in the 18^th century. Of the three pedals on the bottom, the Damper Pedal on the right lifts all the felt cloths above the strings so they can all be able to vibrate easily. The left pedal moves the keyboard and action sideways to let the hammer to play any one of the 2 or 3 unison strings of each tenor and treble key. The middle pedal usually holds the dampers up.

This inventor of the piano is not positive, but there is little doubt that it was Bartolomeo Cristorfori who built his harpsichord with loud and soft in Florence in 1709. But this wasn’t the 1^st instrument using a keyboard pushing action; examples of the piano idea existed as early as 1440! Cristofori had put together all the parts needed for the modern piano that he built by 1726. The modern piano has 88 keys, and the earliest Piano’s had 5 keys!

The piano, which has many different designs and forms, were extremely popular in the mid-18^th century. German piano makers liked a lighter, less-expensive piano so they made the Square Piano. A square piano ran horizontally across the piano from each side, this design probably came from clavichord. The earliest square pianos built, were hard to keep them in tune, but that problem was fixed by the idea of metal frames. The late square pianos were no longer than 6 feet (1.8 m) and weighed heavier than most grand pianos.

In 1860, the Upright Piano had taken the place of the square piano. Early built upright pianos were made with the strings rising from the keyboard level. They were usually tall and were made in elegant shapes. But as Johan Isaac Hawkins took the strings down to a floor level, the upright became shorter and easier to keep in small rooms. The shortest types of uprights are called Spinets or consoles. Hawkins was an Englishman who lived in the United States in about 1800 and was an important piano maker in Philadelphia.

Piano changed history because of the music it has produced, from Bach and Mozart to the Pachelbal Canon. If there weren’t a Piano to produce this beautiful music than we would be without the wonderful sound of the Piano.

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