How does a piano work and what are its components?
Whether you’ve been playing your dear piano for a while now or if you’ve only just started, you’re likely unaware of quite a few things about your instrument. How does your piano work, and what makes it produce such beautiful music? In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into the main components of an acoustic piano to give context as to how your actions on this instrument contribute to making its sounds.
If you’re wondering ‘But why should I know this?’ keep in mind that knowing more about the piano doesn’t just help you understand how to solve any potential issues you might face when maintaining your instrument, it also may help you discover new things about the piano that could enhance your next performance.
First of all - did you know that a piano classifies as both a percussion instrument and a string instrument? Let’s look at the components that influence this classification
Piano Keys
Let’s start with an obvious one - even non-pianists are aware that pianos have keys, and that these keys are what needs pressing to produce the music. Any full-size piano you’ll find will have 88 keys in total, splitting between white ones and black ones. However, there are some rare ones with up to 108 keys, imagine that!
If you’ve just started out, you might have only explored a little the combination of the different colored keys, but know that the white ones play the natural notes while the black keys cover flat and sharp notes instead.
So, what happens when you press one of these keys? As soon as your finger hits the note, the lever that’s inside the piano jumps in the air!
Piano Strings
Your piano can produce a huge nuance of sounds thanks to the numerous strings attached to each key you press. While the low notes have one thick string each, the higher-pitch notes have multiple strings and are thinner, so that they can produce such a higher pitch.
The exact number of strings varies depending on the piano, for example, a grand piano can have as many as 230 strings (but even this can vary!). When you press a note, the lever strikes the string, but it can’t do that without the help of a specific component.
Piano Hammers
So you have the strings ready to produce the sounds as you press your keys, but how do they exactly get played? That’s the job of the piano hammers, which hit the strings once the lever is elevated by you pressing down on the keys.
While these hammers are made out mostly of wood (like nearly all of your piano) the part that hits the strings is actually made with felt, this is to allow for the strings to make the vibration and tone you were hoping for when playing.
Piano Pedals
If you’re new to the piano, you’re likely to have yet to explore how the pedals at the bottom of your piano can help your playing. Usually, you would find three of them, and each one of them works in a different way to contribute to the sound you produce, from softening the notes you play to allowing the notes you pressed to keep playing even after you lift your fingers.
These pedals tell the hammers to change the way they strike the strings down, and vary between one and the other (learn more about the piano pedals by checking out our blog all about how to use the piano pedals).
We hope that this blog has shed light on what happens when you play the piano, and that’s made you more curious to try different ways to play your pieces and explore components of your piano you’ve yet to become familiar with. Keep learning and have fun with your playing!
