The Anatomy of a Piano

To the untrained eye, all those parts and mechanisms that come along with a piano can be quite intimidating.

Breaking down the piano piece by piece will help you understand more about the piano and about how it works.

The sound is, of course, the most important thing when talking about a musical instrument. There’s just a bit more to it than tapping a key, which activates a hammer, that makes a steel string vibrate.

The sound is created along with the soundboard, which is the surface the strings vibrate against. The soundboard helps to accentuate the acoustics of the strings to the surrounding air, resulting in better sound quality.

When one taps down on a key, produces a sound, and releases that same key, the sound is stopped. The pedals at the bottom of the piano will allow the sound to continue even when the key is released.

From the outside of the piano, there are 52 white keys and 36 black keys. Each plays a different note, or sound, and each key corresponds to a single steel string.

Each string is different so each key produces a different sound.

The outer casing of the piano, normally made out of wood, protects the inner mechanisms of the piano.

There are a few different types of pianos, from the grand piano to the straight vertical, however they all use essentially the same mechanisms.

The principle, rather, is the same; pressing down on a key, activating a hammer, which vibrates a string against a soundboard. Once one understands the functions of the parts in a piano and the underlying physics that goes along with them, one will understand exactly how a piano works.

Opening up the piano to see what’s inside will hopefully be a lot less overwhelming!

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