Piano Learning – Learn How to Play the Piano

Get to know more about Piano History and Musical Performance before start up your piano learning. Get to know the background of the Music Composer.

History and musical performance
Main article:Piano History and Musical Performance

Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven,

was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt ,Chopin,Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and

Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.

Modern piano
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.

Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.

In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the “concert grand” (between about 2.2 m and 3 m long) from the “parlor grand” or “boudoir grand” (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller “baby grand”.

All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have larger, richer sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand’s strings will have truer overtones. This allows the strings to be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less “stretching” in the piano tuning (See:Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.

A grand piano action has a repetition lever for each key. If the key is pressed repeatedly and fairly quickly this repetition lever catches the hammer close to the strings, which assists the speed and control of repeated notes and trills.

Source: from Wikipedia, The Encyclopedia