Piano vibrate how does it work

One end of each string is anchored to the plate toward the rear of a grand or the bottom of a vertical piano. The other end is coiled around a tuning pin embedded in a laminated hardwood pinblock hidden under the plate at the front grand or top vertical. Accessory parts, such as the music desk and lid, are both functional and aesthetic in purpose.

Although the acoustical and structural elements have been described separately, in fact the plate, wooden framework, soundboard, bridges, and strings form a single integrated unit called the strung back. A piano, then, consists of a strung back, an action, and a cabinet or case.

Previous Topic Next Topic. This form is for comments and feedback about our articles. Please do not use it to post ads for pianos for sale or donation. Use our Classified-Ad section instead. For questions about the value of a used piano, see this article , or use our Seller Advisory Service.

For other piano-related questions, e-mail us at [email protected]. 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.

Designers of upright pianos need to make compromises to fit the enormous mechanism of the grand piano into a smaller space. The grand piano has a wing shape so that the part of the piano housing the high strings is stiffer.

This is ideal for the high frequency resonance of the high notes. The part of the piano housing the bass strings is larger and more flexible to make them sound their best.

Upright pianos, with their square construction, have to compromise on the tone of the high and low strings to fit them into a square frame. The mechanism in upright pianos is not horizontal like in a grand piano, vertical. As such, the hammers do not use gravity to fall back into position like they do in a grand piano. They need a little help along the way and this means that grand pianos can repeat notes 2.

Digital pianos have improved greatly over the past 30 years and today have exceptionally realistic "weighted" keys that can feel a lot like playing a mechanical piano. But if you are planning on playing and performing on mechanical pianos it is best to learn on a mechanical instrument.

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.

Plucked instruments, such as the harp, have strings that vibrate much like the piano. Instruments such as the guitar, ukulele and mandolin are designed so that the strings can be fretted and therefore made shorter, thus raising the pitch.

The mechanical action allowing the hammer to drop instantly away from the strings is called the escapement. If a hammer remained in contact with the strings, it would produce a "clunk" sound instead of a sustained musical tone. Modern piano hammers are made of wood covered with thick, tightly compacted felt. The size of the hammers increases steadily from treble to bass. If a piano is played so much that the felt becomes extremely tightly compacted from striking the strings, the piano may produce an unpleasant, harsh tone.

The tuner can voice the hammers by loosening the felt fibers a bit with special needles so the tone becomes mellower. The vibration of a piano's strings alone would be too quiet to be heard; their sound must be amplified. Piano strings, like those of a violin or a guitar, press down on a bridge which conducts their vibration to the large, thin piece of wood called the soundboard.

Wooden ribs glued across the board, underneath, help spread the strings' vibration throughout its mass. While a crack in a violin body is a very serious matter, a crack in a piano's soundboard can be repaired easily, without losing any of the piano's tone quality, and without "major surgery".

Often, cracks in a piano's soundboard are of no musical consequence, and should be left alone. Maintaining proper humidity during the winter heating season helps to prevent cracks from occurring. The function of a damper is to stop the vibration of a string when the sound has continued long enough. As long as the player's finger depresses the key, the damper belonging to that key's strings remains lifted, and the strings are free to vibrate.