The month of March hosts a very special day for piano players. March 29, 2021, is the 88th day of the year!
Last week’s episode gave all the fun details of how we are going to celebrate leading up to this special day. If you haven’t listened to PPP229 yet, be sure to catch it when you’re done with this episode. We’ve got a fun practice incentive that will last the whole month of March: We’re playing BINGO!!
If you haven’t already seen it on my Instagram feed, you can find all the details at www.pianoparentpodcast.com/march (Fun fact: Listening to TODAY’s episode is one of the squares on the card! After you listen here, go download your free BINGO card. You’re already ahead of the game!)
Today, we’re playing another little game called, “Is that really part of the piano?” This show, like all of my podcast episodes, is kid-friendly so I hope you will listen with your favorite piano kid.
I will call out a name or maybe a group of names and you can decide if it is part of the piano.
Listen to the full episode here
1. Shostakovich, Sforzando, or Sostenuto
Between the words Shostakovich, sforzando, and sostenuto, which one is part of the piano?
Shostakovich was a composer from Russia during the 20th century. You can play his music on the piano but he is not part of the piano.
Sforzando is a fun word to say and it means to play accented notes. You can play sforzando on the piano but it’s not part of the piano either.
Sostenuto means to sustain notes longer than their usual value. This effect can be created with or without a special pedal but sostenuto is what many people call the middle pedal on the piano.
Depending on the type of acoustic piano you have, your middle pedal could be used for sustaining selected notes but that is only one possible function of the middle pedal. Some pianos don’t even have a middle pedal. If your piano does have a middle pedal, it might not function as a sostenuto. It might be just for looks – not functional at all, a practice pedal – when locked in place, all the notes are quieter so you can practice without disturbing your sleeping little brother or sister, a bass sustain – holding out only the notes of the lower end of the piano, or, if your piano is really brand new, you might have modern technology which includes the silent pedal function.
Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel are a few composers who utilized the sostenuto sound. In the early days of the piano, before the instrument became more standardized, there were lots of pedals to create different sounds and effects. At one point the pedals were just below the keyboard and engaged by lifting your knee.
2. Sustain or Damper
As long as we’re talking about pedals, tell me what the name of the right foot pedal is. Is it sustain or damper? The answer is Yes. The right foot pedal, when pressed, releases the felt damper from the strings allowing them all to vibrate. The notes you played with your hands will continue sounding if the damper pedal is engaged even after you take your hands off the keys. This creates a much fuller, less choppy sound.
Pedal marks are usually marked with a line under the bass staff to let you know when to press the pedal down and when to lift it up. However, some music will have the abbreviation “Ped.” written when you’re supposed to press the pedal. The font is very swirly and pretty and hard to read. For years, I thought the letters were Led. I couldn’t figure out what Led had to do with the pedal (I thought it might be an abbreviation of some other strange Italian word.) but I knew what to do when I saw that symbol. Makes me wonder if there are any misconnections with my students…..
Even though there are pedal marks in the music, make sure you are still listening to the sound you are creating. Don’t let the sound get too muddy or cluttered. When you are using the damper/sustain pedal be careful that you don’t overuse it. There is a quote attributed to Debussy,
“….abusing the pedal is only a means of covering up a lack of technique, making a lot of noise to drown the music you’re slaughtering!” – Claude Debussy.
Often when a piece calls for legato, I will insist that my student learns to play legato WITHOUT using the damper pedal at first. It’s very easy to let our fingers get lazy and make the pedal do all the work.
3. Bed
Okay, our next word is bed. What do you think? Is a bed part of your piano? The answer is yes and it is called the keybed. The keybed is a rail underneath the keys on your piano keyboard. This rail usually has felt material to buffer the sound and stop the downward motion of the key when you press it. Have you ever been on a see-saw at the park and the person on the other side jumped off before you were ready and your end of the see-saw crashed to the ground? Then you can appreciate the importance of the keybed. Plus, when you are making beautiful music, you don’t want the movement of the keys or the thud of the keys hitting the bottom of the keyboard causing a distraction. The keybed eliminates the sounds your piano makes because of all the moving parts.
4. Chromatics and Naturals
This one is new for me so I had to look it up in my “New Harvard Dictionary of Music”. Here are your words: chromatics and naturals. When I tell you what this is on your piano you may give yourself a facepalm and wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Are you ready? These are the names of the black and white piano keys. Duh, right?
White keys are called the naturals. That’s easy because they each have a natural letter name of the music alphabet with no added sharp or flat. On some websites, the black keys were called accidentals or enharmonics. Now, enharmonics I can understand. In fact, I have a whole episode about enharmonic note names. In PPP162 I called them the There, Their, They’re of Music Notation – they sound the same but their spelling is different. I understand using this term when speaking about the notation itself but I never considered calling the piano keys enharmonics. As for calling them accidentals, I don’t agree at all. They are intentionally included on the piano so why would you call them accidentals? Accidentals in notation, yes, on the keyboard, no.
I think the best term for the black keys is chromatic. According to Merriam-Webster, chromatic means ‘of or relating to’. Chromatic can be used in terms of colors that are closely related. The black keys derive their name from the natural key they are related to in that musical instance. The middle black key in a group of three is called G# or Ab depending on the context of the music.
5. Strings
Okay, you already know your acoustic piano has strings. My question for you today is how many strings does it have? Are you thinking 88 strings; one per piano key? That would have been my guess too but the answer is much higher than that! Depending on the model of your piano, it could have as many as 230 strings. I’m sure you’ve noticed the distinct shape of a grand piano. The shape is because of the length of the strings. The high sounds on the right side of the piano have short, thin strings. As you move left to the lower side of the piano, the strings gradually get much longer and thicker. Since the strings at the high end of the piano are so tiny and short, there are three strings per key. This helps make a stronger sound for those high notes. The middle keys of the piano will likely have two or three strings per key and the lowest keys only need one big string to create a strong sound.
6. Hammers
Did you know your piano is full of hammers? No wonder it’s so heavy!? No, silly, it’s not that kind of hammer. Remember when I talked about riding a see-saw at the park? That is similar to the way your piano keys work. You press the key down outside the piano and the other end of the key on the inside goes up like a see-saw and causes a tiny hammer to strike the string (or strings) and causes them to vibrate. We’ll talk more about how important those hammers are in just a little bit.
Some people have a hard time deciding which family of instruments the piano belongs to. In an orchestra, there are several families or groups of instruments. There is the brass family with trumpets and french horns. There is the woodwind family with flutes and bassoons. There is the string family with violins and cellos. Finally, there is the percussion family with all sorts of drums. Since we were just talking about the hammers striking the piano keys, some people consider the piano to be a percussion instrument. The problem is those hammers strike strings. The piano has more strings than any other stringed instrument so some people think it belongs in the string family. In my opinion, the piano is in a group all by itself.
7. Lights, Camera, Action
Alright, we’re at the seventh item on my list. When I say lights, camera, action, do you think any of those are really parts of your piano? Well, you need a good light to be able to see your music and these days, our laptop cameras are helping teachers and students connect for online lessons but those are not part of the piano.
Action, in the most basic definition, is a term used to describe the mechanism that causes the hammer to strike the string, causes the damper to be released so the string can resonate, and then catches the hammer silently after impact with the string.
Sometimes all that movement, the action, is rather stiff, making the piano difficult to play; the keys are hard to press. Sometimes the action is light and the piano is easy to play. Even though pianos are technically the same, they can feel very different from each other. This explains why you can play your piece so well at home but seem to make so many mistakes during your lesson when you play your teacher’s piano.
This is a real issue for students with very light action keyboards (not digital pianos with weighted keys). When they practice at home, the keys are very responsive and they don’t have to use much arm weight to play their music. Then when they play on their piano teacher’s acoustic piano, they struggle to get any sound out at all. The piano keys don’t respond the same way. Parent parents need to be aware of the type of keyboard they furnish for their piano kids. It may look like any other piano or keyboard but the extremely light action may be building some poor performance habits for your young musician.
I say it all the time, guitar players are at an advantage over piano players because they play on their own instrument wherever they go. Pianists can’t strap their piano to their back and take it with them. They have to be flexible and adapt to the piano they are asked to play. Some are in tune, some are not. Some have a light action, some have a heavy action.
Someone compared it to driving a car. The basic principle is the same but every car is different. Sure, you can drive it but you might turn on the windshield wipers when you’re trying to make a left turn.
8. 12,000
What do you think the number 12,000 has to do with your piano? Let’s do some math. We started out talking about the pedals on your piano: 3. Then we talked about the chromatics and naturals: 88 keys. Next, we talked about strings: 230. There are tuning pins for the strings to connect to the piano so that’s another 230 parts. Then there were hammers: 88.
Now when we talked about the action of the piano I told you I was using a very basic definition. There is so much more to the action mechanism than we can talk about today but here is a short list I found in my music dictionary.
Here’s a quick list: keybed, keyframe, front rail, balance rail, balance rail stud, back rail, key stop rail, key covering, key button, back check, underlever key cushion, action hanger, support rail, support, fly, support top flange, balancer, …. the list just keeps going.
Do you see where I’m going with 12,000? A grand piano has about 12,000 total parts, 10,000 moving parts. Amazing!
If you’d like to know more about caring for all those 12,000 parts of your piano listen to PPP170.
9. Belly
Do you think your piano has a belly? Of course it does but it’s called a soundboard. Have you ever put your phone in a bowl or a coffee mug to amplify the sound? Then you know exactly what the belly or the soundboard of your piano does. The soundboard of your piano is made of pieces of wood (Spruce) joined together to make a giant speaker. The wood is shaped into a curve (called the crown) to allow for maximum resonance and amplification throughout the entire body of the piano.
10. Gravicembalo
Here is our last word, gravicembalo (grahvi-CHEM-balo) Does that sound like something that might be on a piano? Actually, it is the name of the first piano. Its full name was Gravicembalo col piano e forte, which means a keyboard that would play soft and loud. Bartolomeo Cristofori didn’t exactly set out to create a new instrument. He just wanted to improve on an existing keyboard instrument, the harpsichord. The harpsichord looks very much like a piano but it creates sound is by plucking the strings when you press the keys. It doesn’t matter if you strike the keys gently or with a lot of velocity, the sound will be the same, not very loud. Harpsichords had a lot of stops and levers to activate more strings to help make a fuller sound.
Cristofori took a different approach to create a fuller sound. Instead of using a plucking mechanism to make the strings vibrate, he decided to strike the strings with hammers. This would give musicians more control over the sound of their music. Because of this change, performers could decide exactly how they wanted each key to sound – softer when the key is pressed more gently or louder when the key is pressed more forcefully. You can thank Mr. Cristofori the next time your teacher asks you to play with more expressive dynamics. All you have to do is change how you play the key. In the harpsichord days, you’d have to press a lever or pull a stop and then remember to unpress and unpull when you wanted a different sound. You’ve really got it easier these days!
There you have it. Ten things I bet you didn’t know about your piano. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I learned a thing or two as I was doing my research. Now I can try to impress my students!
Don’t forget that for the entire month of March we are gearing up for the 88th day of the year, March 29.
Click here to grab your March BINGO card and be sure to mark off the square that has “listen to episode 230” in it.
You’re one step closer to shouting “BINGO!”
Social Sharables
Click an image to share directly to your pinterest account. Download an image to share in your social circles. If the image isn’t branded, please link back to this page and help us spread the word about all the great resources at Piano Parent Podcast. Thank you!
Thanks for listening!
To share your thoughts:
- Leave a note in the comment section below
- Ask a question at pianoparentpodcast@gmail.com
- Share this show on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest
To help out the show:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More
