The Introduction

Taking a cue from BR man I too have decided to share my knowledge concerning music and its appreciation and in particular playing the piano. Through my short life thus far I’ve encountered numerous instruments none of which I’ve mastered to a mentionable degree with the exception of the piano.

Among other instruments that I’ve dabbled with, notable ones include the bugle, the trumpet, the bagpipe and the flute, yes the good old Indian flute. Most of these instruments have a limited musical range with respect to the notes that they can produce. Here’s a little bit about each-

The trumpet is the one thing that comes to mind when you thing British Bands and stuff like marching bands. It’s generally used and perceived as a “happy” instrument due to the high pitched nature of its tone. As with most lung powered instruments the amplitude or loudness it produces depends on the player. On your average trumpet 12 noted that is half the chromatic scale is possible. A trumpet works on the principle of the resonance and sanding waves produced by the oscillations of air in a column of varying length. The variation of length is the means of getting different notes out of the instrument.

The bugle is rather like a trumpet where the air column has a fixed length in which to vibrate. The notes that are produced by a bugle are rather discreet and hard to distinguish as it is player dependent. What you do with a bugle is essentially pinch your lips together and blow the blowing causing oscillations which are amplified in the tube of the bugle. This amplification is rather useful and is used in places where the sound is required to travel a great distance. The tone of a bugle is distinctive and can be very irritating especially when you’re asleep. That’s why it’s used to wake people up.

The bagpipe is a Scottish wind-reed instrument that can produce seven notes. It works on a principle similar to that of a trumpet except that here the variations in vibrating length are produced by closing or opening holes on what is called a “chanter” by some. This same principle is employed in a flute with the difference being that a bagpipe produces a continuous note even when you stop blowing unlike a flute. The name “bag” derives from the fact that there’s an air filled bag which plugs into a number of holes, 5 to be exact. Three holes are connected to drone pipes which produce a continuous droning sound. The “drone” note can be varied by inverting or plugging out one or all of the drone pipes. It is possible to play the instrument with all the drones off. The fourth pipe serves as an input through which air is blown into the bag which inflates and drives a narrow stream of air into the stick like part that’s held in the hand. This has holes which can be “played” to produce different sounds. The three drone pipes are mounted across the left shoulder with the stick in the two hands.

The piano is a commonly used western musical instrument that’s normally played two handed. A normal piano (not an electronic keyboard) will have 8 octaves and be something like 2 meters in length. The sound of a piano is produced by hammers that strike strings which are under tension. It is possible to produce different notes by varying the tension in the strings. The hammers respond to the key presses, by the way.

The word octave that I used in the previous paragraph refers to a full set of notes or physically a set of seven white keys and five black keys. If you look closely at the layout of a keyboard you’ll see a regular pattern of keys repeated. Actually it’s repeated eight times forming the eight octaves.

The set starts with the two black keys and the three white keys on either side of them and the one in between. It continues to include the next 3 black keys and the four that surround then. The black keys are a level higher than the white keys in accordance with the fact that they denote sharps or flats (something I’ll come to later). Most performance pianos are called grand pianos though some time ago that was used to refer strictly to pianos that had horizontally mounted strings( most living room ones have the strings vertical to save space). The average grand piano though strictly manually operated can be found in electric varieties that reduce the stress on your fingers when you play. Let me tell you that from experience playing an electric one is a lot easier on your fingers compared to a manual one which you literally have to beat to hear.

About an electronic keyboard (it’s called by THAT name, please don’t call it a Casio, they make stupid keyboards) –

It’s just a slice of the actual piano that’s electronically driven and produces sound through speakers (in most cases). It’s a fairly good place to start and one of the most commonly used ones. For beginners a standard Casio model will suffice heck even I still have my first five octave Casio keyboard though I’ve now moved up to a Korg.

Other piano types exist like the ones used in churches called the reed or pipe organ. This is very similar in appearance to a regular piano but differs in the way the sound is produced.

That’s enough of a started. More later when I’ll dispense knowledge on playing scales and reading sheet music.

The Chromatic Scale

The chromatic scale is the scale that contains all twelve pitches of the Western tempered scale.

All the other scales in traditional Western music are subsets of this scale. Each pitch is separated from its upper and lower neighbors by the interval of one half step, or semitone. In tonal and other music this scale finds little use outside of decorative runs up or down as it has no harmonic direction and is considered cliched. The term 'chromatic' is understood by musicians to refer to music which includes tones which are not members of the prevailing scale, and also as a word descriptive of those individually non-diatonic tones.

Music Theory

Melody

A Melody is a series of pitches sounding in succession. In Western music, the notes of a melody are typically created with respect to scales or modes. The rhythm of a melody is often based on the inflections of language or the physical rhythms of dance. It is typically divided into phrases within a larger overarching structure.

Pitch

Musical sounds are composed of pitch, duration, and timbre. Pitch is determined by the sound's frequency of vibration, such as the note A which at modern concert pitch is defined to be 440 Hz. Tuning is the process of assigning pitches to notes. The difference in pitch between two notes is called an interval. The most basic interval is the octave; a note and another note with twice its frequency form an octave, and if the pitch with frequency 440 Hz is A, then the pitches with frequency 880 Hz, 1760 Hz as well as 220 Hz, 110 Hz, and 55 Hz are also A's. Notes can be arranged into different scales and modes. In western music theory, the octave is divided into 12 notes, each called a half-step or semitone. Patterns of half and whole steps (2 half steps, or a tone) make up a scale in that octave. The scales most commonly encountered are the major, the harmonic minor, the melodic minor, and the natural minor.

In music written using the system of major-minor tonality, the key of a piece determines the scale used. Transposing a piece from C major to D major will make all the notes two semitones higher. Even in modern equal temperament, changing the key can change the feel of a piece of music, because it changes the relationship of the composition's pitches to the pitch range of the instruments on which the piece is being performed. This often affects the music's timbre, as well as having technical implications for the performers. However, changing the key in which a piece is performed may go unrecognized by the listener, since changing the key does not change the relationship of the individual pitches to each other. Therefore, different keys are often considered equivalent and a matter of choice on the part of performers. This is especially true for popular and folk songs.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds in time. Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings, called measures or bars. The time signature or meter signature specifies how many beats are in a measure, and which value of written note is counted and felt as a single beat. Through increased stress and attack (and subtle variations in duration), particular tones may be accented. There are conventions in most musical traditions for a regular and hierarchical accentuation of beats to reinforce the meter. Syncopated rhythms are rhythms that accent unexpected parts of the beat. Playing simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature is called polymeter. See also polyrhythm.

In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty, William Rothstein, and Joel Lester.

Harmony

Harmony occurs when two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously, although harmony can be implied when pitches are sounded successively rather than simultaneously (as in arpeggiation). Two simultaneous pitches form a diad. Three or more pitches sounded simultaneously are called chords, though the term is often used to indicate a particular organization of pitches, such as the triad, rather than just any three or more pitches.

According to Wikipedia

The modern piano

Types

Modern pianos come in two basic configurations and several sizes: the grand piano and the upright piano.

Grand pianos have the frame and strings placed horizontally, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. This makes the grand piano a large instrument, for which the ideal setting is a spacious room with high ceilings for proper resonance. There are several sizes of grand piano. Manufacturers and models vary, but a rough generalisation distinguishes the "concert grand", (between about 2.2 m to 3 m long) from the "boudoir grand" (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller "baby grand" (which may be shorter than it is wide). All else being equal, longer pianos have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less stretching (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas baby grands are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.

Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are placed vertically, extending in both directions from the keyboard and hammers. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, rather than upward against gravity as in a grand piano; however, the very best upright pianos now approach the level of grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness. However, one feature of the grand piano action always makes it superior to the vertical piano. All grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the key remains depressed. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than they could on a vertical piano. The action design of a vertical prevents it from having a repetition lever. Because of this, piano manufacturers claim that a skilled piano player can play as many as 14 trill notes per second on grands but only seven on uprights. For recent advances, see Innovations in the piano.

In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, a kind of piano which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. Also in the 19th century, toy pianos began to be manufactured.

A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is simply a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way.

Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with current technology, it remains difficult to duplicate a crucial aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to a beautiful piano tone, in many experts' estimation digital pianos still do not compete with the best acoustic pianos in tone quality. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software.

Keyboard

For the arrangement of the keys on a piano keyboard, see Musical keyboard. This arrangement was inherited from the harpsichord without change, with the trivial exception of the colour scheme (white for notes in the C major scale and black for other notes) which became standard for pianos in the late 18th century.

Almost every modern piano has 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions. The most notable example of an extended range can be found on Bösendorfer pianos, one model which extends the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. Sometimes, these extra keys are hidden under a small hinged lid, which can be flipped down to cover the keys and avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard; on others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white). The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.

Pedals

Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) The three pedals that have become more or less standard on the modern piano are the following.

The damper pedal (also called the sustaining pedal or loud pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. Every string on the piano, except the top two octaves, is equipped with a damper, which is a padded device that prevents the string from vibrating. The damper is raised off the string whenever the key for that note is pressed. When the damper pedal is pressed, all the dampers on the piano are lifted at once, so that every string can vibrate. This serves two purposes. First, it assists the pianist in producing a legato (playing smoothly connected notes) in passages where no fingering is available to make this otherwise possible. Second, raising the damper pedal causes all the strings to vibrate sympathetically with whichever notes are being played, which greatly enriches the piano's tone.

Sensitive pedaling is one of the techniques a pianist must master, since piano music from Chopin onwards tends to benefit from extensive use of the sustaining pedal, both as a means of achieving a singing tone and as an aid to legato. In contrast, the sustaining pedal was used only sparingly by the composers of the 18th century, including Haydn, Mozart and in early works by Beethoven; in that era, pedalling was considered primarily as a special coloristic effect.

The soft pedal or "una corda" pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. On a grand piano, this pedal shifts the whole action including the keyboard slightly to the right, so that hammers that normally strike all three of the strings for a note strike only two of them. This softens the note and modifies its tone quality. For notation of the soft pedal in printed music, see Italian musical terms.

The soft pedal was invented by Cristofori and thus appeared on the very earliest pianos. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the soft pedal was more effective than today, since pianos were manufactured with only two strings per note, just one string per note would be therefore struck — this is the origin of the name "una corda", Italian for "one string". In modern pianos, there are three strings per hammer and are spaced too closely to permit a true "una corda" effect — if shifted far enough to strike just one string on one note, the hammers would hit the string of the next note.

On many upright pianos, the soft pedal operates a mechanism which moves the hammers' resting position closer to the strings. Since the hammers have less distance to travel this reduces the speed at which they hit the strings, and hence the volume is reduced, but this does not change tone quality in the way the "una corda" pedal does on a grand piano.

Digital pianos often use this pedal to alter the sound to that of another instrument such as the organ, guitar, or harmonica. Pitch bends, leslie speaker on/off, vibrato modulation, etc. increase the already-great versatility of such instruments.

The sostenuto pedal or "middle pedal" keeps raised any damper that was raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations. The sostenuto pedal was the last of the three pedals to be added to the standard piano, and to this day, many pianos are not equipped with a sostenuto pedal. (Almost all modern grand pianos have a sostenuto pedal, while most upright pianos do not.) A number of twentieth-century works specifically call for the use of this pedal, for example Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux. This pedal is often unused in modern music.

Many uprights and baby grands have a bass sustain in place of the sostenuto pedal, which lifts all the dampers in the bass. It works like the damper pedal, but only affects the lowest notes.

Some upright pianos have a practice pedal or celeste pedal in place of the sostenuto. This pedal, which can usually be locked in place by depressing it and pushing it to one side, drops a strip of felt between the hammers and the strings so that all the notes are greatly muted — a handy feature for those who wish to practice in domestic surroundings without disturbing the neighbours. The practice pedal is rarely used in performance.

The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, uses the middle pedal as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key.

See also: Pedal piano

The Piano Guitar Difference

The main technical difference between the guitar and piano lies in the different functions that are carried out by the hands on each of the two instruments. This is the difference that has the most important implications during the "creative phase".

The hand position when playing the guitar

In the guitar, one hand -the left one, in the case of right-handed musicians- selects the note that must be played, whereas the other -the right one- is the one that actually plays it. This fact has the effect, for example, of making it impossible to accompany a falseta (that is, a melody that is found between sections of accompaniment). rhythmically with chords.

This is not the case for the piano, in which both hands carry out a similar function, even though, as a result of the fact that the more acute register tends to be reserved for the melody, the right hand is usually responsible for the melodic part and the right one executes the accompaniment.

Thus, playing a falseta while doubling the melody, that is, playing it with both hands at the same time, is possible on the piano. Likewise, it is also possible to play the melody of the falseta with the right hand while we accompany it, both harmonically and rhythmically, with the left one. Therefore, the existence of a distinctive technique will give rise to a distinctive sound.

The Start

All gret journeys start with a single step.

Here I plan to settle scores with people who I'm too chicken to beat up in real life.

Galore