Hammer that Voice

 

We think of a person’s voice, and how it is impacted by how one breathes, how the vocal cords work, how the sound resonates in head’s cavities, and how the mouth and tongue work. It’s complicated!  And each voice is unique.

What about the voice of the piano? Yes, it has one, and it is unique. But is the tuning and the piano’s hammers that determine that voice.

A piano tuner adjusts the string’s tension so that the tone sociated with each key is evened out.

The piano’s tune is obviously impacted in how the player hits the keys—the strength and the speed—and how those keys physically connect with the piano hammers; each mechanical piece and its connections impact how the hammer moves. Moreover, as the hammers wear down, the voice can change.

Less obvious is the hammer’s felt coverings. The felt can vary significantly in terms of its surface area, its density, its hardness, and its quality.

AND, just as the head’s “cavities” impact a person’s voice, the piano’s own soundboard and cavity also impact how the sound resonates: producing a unique voice.

 Similarly to a person’s voice being described as lyric or dramatic, bright or deep, so to the voice of a piano can be described. A piano’s voice my be warm and mellow, which means the piano is well-balanced. A bright piano voice has a higher voice, which can seem lively and clear—or shrill. A dark piano voice is bass-heavy, and may be rich—or booming. A rich piano voice typically has enhanced treble and bass tones. Concert pianos often have a big, powerful voice, largely due to their size.

Now imagine matching a person’s voice and a piano’s voice. Yes, indeed, complicated and unique.

Tickling the Ivories

 

You may be heard of the phrase “tickling the ivories,” which refers to playing the piano – with the assumption that the top of the keys were made of ivory (the rest is wood). Ivory, which comes from animal tusks such as elephants, was chosen because of its esthetics, its hardness, and its ability to absorb the perspiration from a performer's fingers. However, ivory keys are more likely to chip or crack, and are unlikely to be replaced by ivory as its use has been outlawed.

One of the ways that you can identify an old piano is by examining its keys. Over time, ivory keys turn yellow; the darker the shade, the older the ivory keys. Moreover, the keys' colors may vary from one to another on a piano as each key comes from natural tusks with their own variations.

Even though keys can be bleached, the coloring is likely to be unique. Ivory keys also have natural patterns like finger points, which a magnifying glass might reveal as cross-hatches, curved lines, or diamond patterns.

Speaking of color, an ultraviolet light will reflect a bright white or blue-violet color, whereas a plastic key will appear dull because it absorbs the light.

Another way to identify real ivory is by seeing if there is one than one piece of key per key. Two pieces of ivory made up the top layer, and another piece made the front edge. So you can use a magnifying glass to see where the pieces join.

Although not encouraged, you can use a noodle to test ivory. If you heat up one end over an open flame until it glows red hot, and then press that end on the key, if it melts or dents the key, that key is NOT ivory.

Ivory is not permitted to be made into piano keys now; instead, keys are generally made of plastic, which is cheaper, more consistent looking, easier to work with, and less prone to damage (especially to the animal). High-quality plastic eys can be hardly distinguisable from ivoty.

You can still BUY a used piano with ivory keys, but not a new one. Furthermore, an antique piano with ivory keys is supposed to have along with it the appropriate paperwork and permits for transfer of ownership and shipping. Buyer, beware.

Keying into Keyboards

 

Sometimes the piano keyboard seems a bit arbitrary. For instance, why are the keys black and white – and why are there 88 keys?

The white keys represent the “natural” octave, and the black keys indicate the half tones within the octave to constitute the Western scale. As for the color, the easy answer is that keys were originally made with ivory (white) and ebony (black). Centuries ago, the harpsichord keyboard had the opposite color scheme: CDE… were black and the half tones were white.  Since there are fewer half tones, the result was that the keyboard was largely black, and it was sometimes harder to see the line between the keys. With the current white arrangement, the key edges are easier to see, so the player doesn’t have to pay as much attention to striking the right key.

Even the width of the keys have varied over the years; an octave could span as little as 4.9 inches to as much as 6.7 inches. The standard now is 6.7 inches, but some smaller sizes have been created and sold in recent years. You can imagine, though, getter used to one span width and then having to adjust to a different width; that change could really challenge your muscle memory when performing.

The number of keys also has an historical back story. The same harpsichord mentioned above had about 60 keys, but piano composers wanted to broaden the range of notes to approach other musical instruments such as woodwinds. Seven octaves seems to be a good range because notes that are even higher can be hard for some people to hear, and  very low notes can be hard to distinguish between each other. That would result in 85 keys, which was common in the 19^th century. The Steinway pianos of the late 19^th century added three lower keys to create more resonance—and set themselves apart from their competitors;  the 88 keys ended up setting the standard for the industry, which has been followed ever since. However, 97-key pianos are also sold (again, to produce a more resonant sound because of the lower strings), and in 2018, a nine-octave piano (108 key) was built more as an experiment. It should also be noted that digital pianos sometime have 76, which makes them more portable.

 Each of these features impacts the composition and performance of the piano; each has an evidence-based purpose. So piano keyboards are not arbitrary after all.

Organs versus Pianos

The first keyboard instrument Tomoko played was the organ, not the piano. Therefore, she had to learn two different ways to use those keyboards. 

The most obvious difference between the two instruments is the way that the sound is produced; the piano is technically a percussion instrument while an organ is technically a woodwind instrument. Instead of piano hammers striking a set of strings as a pressed piano key releases the action mechanism level, organ pipes project the pitches based on the level of pressure that each key signals to its linked pipe. Organs also have stop knobs to adjust sounds by controlling the amount of pressurized air flowing to the pipes. 

For the piano, three pedals on the bottom can change the sound; one pedal shifts the action so that the hammer strikes just one of the three strings for the same note.  The other pedals lift the damper so that the string can vibrate longer.  On the organ’s bottom, a pedalboard produces pitches out of the pipes. 

In terms of the keyboard itself, the five-octave organ has 61 keys while the piano has 17 more; an organ with fewer octaves have fewer keys. Furthermore, organs have two levels of keys, called manuals. The organ’s controls enable the instrument to produce a greater variety of sounds than the piano.  Organ keys are also shorter and narrower than piano keys, and the player uses a lighter touch on the organ – and may need to develop a specific touch for some pieces.  

Knowing the techniques of both piano and organ has helped Tomoko broaden her performance options – and listeners’ enjoyment.