10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Piano

The piano has contributed significantly to the music having had a momentous impact on musicians of all instruments. It was first created in the early 1700's. It originated from a harpsichord and has changed in size and shape several times. Now we have grand pianos, digital pianos, and synthesizers. Here are fifteen interesting facts about this very popular instrument.

Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori invented the first piano in Italy in 1709.
The piano has over 10,000 moving parts. It requires tremendous number of small pieces that need to maneuver perfectly to create the sound we all expect to hear.
230 strings are needed for a piano to utilize its full sound potential.
Tiny hammers strike strings made out of steel within the piano producing sound. Each string usually holds about 170 pounds of tension. This is one of the reasons why you should not tune a piano on your own. Piano tuning is a job for a specialist!
The piano can be considered both a string instrument and a percussion instrument. Most believe it is percussion because the hammers are contacting the strings inside.
The piano has the range of an entire orchestra from its highest note to its lowest note. The sound range of the piano goes from the lowest note you can play on a double-bassoon to the highest note you can play on a piccolo.
Many people refer to the piano keys as “ivories,” but actually they haven’t been made out of ivory since the 1940s. They are now made out of plastic to protect endangered resources.
The pedal on the left is a damper pedal. It moves the hammers closer to the string, which makes the sound softer. The middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. It sustains only the notes you press, and then allows you to play others without sustain. The right pedal is the sustain pedal and is used the most often.
The first piano invented was so expensive that average rich families couldn’t afford it. You could only really find these expensive instruments in homes of aristocrats and royalty for nearly a century before it became more accessible to the general public.
The largest piano ever made was by Adrian Mann, a piano tuner from New Zealand. It weighs 1.4 tons and is 5.7 meters long. It took this 25-year-old 4 years to build it!

If you would like to learn how to play the piano, please contact The Piano Sensei today! We have a range of experience between our instructors and welcome the opportunity to take part in your children’s music education.