As Vartoukian says, "it's better not to kill elephants for the keys. If you own a piano constructed before the s that has yellowed, slightly porous keys, they are probably covered with ivory. The ivory on piano keys is so thin and ages so quickly that it is almost worthless as a raw material. While it is illegal to trade ivory internationally, it is still legal to buy and sell ivory products within Australia, which means you can legally sell your piano to your neighbour.
Australia's laws around ivory trading have come under criticism because they may encourage poachers and ivory smugglers. Perhaps the best thing you can do with your ivory-laced piano is practise regularly to get the most use out of it.
Sometimes, to a piano owner's frustration, a piano key sticks to its neighbour or sticks at its depressed position. There are two common causes of sticky keys. The felt parts of the key mechanism can swell in humid weather, jamming the key. In this case the key needs to be taken out by a piano technician and the felts adjusted or replaced.
Piano keys can also stick because people drop things in between the keys, so your parents are right to enforce the "no food around the piano" rule. As has already been mentioned, piano hammers are thrown by the wippen assembly and strike the string either slowly or quickly, allowing the pianist to play softly or loudly. But it's what happens next that makes the piano mechanism so special.
After hitting the string, piano hammers bounce off the string like a tennis ball thrown against a wall and fall back into their original position. If this weren't the case, the hammer would be in contact with the string as long as the pianist pressed the key, causing it to stop the string. This was actually the principle behind an earlier instrument, the clavichord, which is so quiet that you can barely hear it unless you are playing it.
Piano hammers are made of wood and are covered with highly compressed felt. They used to be covered with various materials, including paper and leather, but it was found that felt produced the best sound. The felt is shaped around the hammer using a special press. Piano felts wear out over time, leading to the "honky-tonk" sound of pianos in old western movies.
Piano felts are fitted under high pressure using a special press and unfortunately can't be replaced easily at home. When struck by the hammers, the piano strings vibrate to produce the piano's sound. Whether the strings play a high or a low note depends on the length, tension, and mass of the string. There are actually three strings for most notes on a piano. The three strings vibrate together to create a rich tone. With only one string the piano would sound quite nasal. Two strings are used for the lower strings and only one copper wire for the lowest eight notes.
Because the hammer is out of the pianist's control when it strikes the string, the pedals form the pianist's most direct contact with the piano strings. A modern grand piano has three pedals. The right-hand pedal, especially on the grand piano, is the damper pedal. It holds the dampers off the strings so that notes ring on even after their key has been released. The left pedal is the soft pedal or "una corda" [one string] pedal.
It shifts the entire keyboard action to one side so that the hammers strike only two of the three strings per note. This gives the piano a softer sound. The middle pedal on grand pianos is called the sostenuto pedal. It raises the dampers only for those notes that are held when the pedal is pressed.
This way some notes can ring on while new notes can be played without being sustained. And when we cross the strings that's what makes sounds. Read the full transcript. VPR News. Vermont Edition. VPR Classical. Inside VPR. Play Live Radio. Next Up:. Available On Air Stations. All Streams. Jane Lindholm. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email. Credit Brent Harrewyn. Credit courtesy from parents. Credit Karen L. Tags Programs But Why. Melody Bodette.
See stories by Melody Bodette. She also produces special projects for the station. See stories by Jane Lindholm. Related Content. When you stop singing, you can hear the piano sounding the same note.
When the vibration from one object causes another object to vibrate, it is called resonance. To understand resonance, it is important to understand why a stretched string makes a specific note.
Each note on the piano makes a specific sound due to standing waves. When a string on a piano is struck by the hammer, the specific note that is made depends on the length, thickness and tension of the string. The simplest way that a string can vibrate is known as the fundamental frequency. The string vibrates much like when a skipping rope is stretched and both ends are fixed held tightly. The pitch of the note depends on the tension, length and thickness of the string. But why does a strike from a hammer cause the string to vibrate in this way?
The hammers in a piano are all nearly the same, yet each string sounds a unique note. When the hammer strikes the string, the blow sends a burst of energy into the string and causes it to vibrate in many different ways. The vibrations are waves, and they move down the string, echo back off the post at the other end and race back and forth. It has just the right energy to make that particular string swing up and down. The strings are attached to a special wooden sound board, which translates the string vibrations into vibrations in the air.
Stringed instruments rely on standing waves to create music.
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