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Innovations in the Piano

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This article covers a number of innovations from recent times in the building of pianos.

Contents

Background

Piano construction is by now a rather conservative area; most of the technological advances were made by about 1880, and indeed it is possible that some contemporary piano buyers might actually be suspicious of pianos that are made differently from the older kind. Yet piano manufacturers, especially the smaller ones, are still experimenting with ways to build better pianos.

In the early 21st century, the obvious way to raise the technological level of any mechanical device is to use digital technology to control it (compare the mid 19th century, where the obvious route was to make some of its parts from steel; e.g. piano strings). Of course, digital technology has been incorporated into pianos, and this innovation is discussed below. But in a sense, it is a far greater challenge to improve the piano in its own terms, as a mechanical/acoustic device. This challenge pits the modern piano designer against some of the finest engineering minds of the nineteenth century, an era when pianos represented some of the most sophisticated of all technological achievements. Nineteenth century piano innovation was, moreover, financed by a far more robust piano market than exists today.

A final issue is that the modern concert grand, 19th-century technology though it is, already sounds very good indeed in the opinion of many listeners (that is, when it is made by the finest makers and skillfully adjusted and tuned). Any innovative piano must therefore compete in the market of musical taste against formidable existing pianos.

The discussion below is organized according to some innovative contemporary piano manufacturers and the inventions with which they are associated. The Web sites of these manufacturers appear at the end.

For clarification of the various parts of the piano mentioned below, see the Wikipedia article piano.

Acoustic and mechanical innovations

The Stuart and Sons piano company of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia makes a piano in which there are bridge agraffes. Agraffes are kind of sturdy metal clip that hold the strings in place. They were invented in 1808 by the piano pioneer Sébastien Érard and have long been employed in quality pianos to terminate the front, that is closer to the player, end of the string. The American company, Sohmer, along with Bluthner in Europe, among others, applied this idea to the string termination on the bridge in pianos, beginning in the 1890's, where bridge pins are ordinarily used. Most applications of agraffes have been located at the near end of the strings, close to the tuning pins. Stuart has reintroduced the use of agraffes on the bridges (of which their pianos have two). It is claimed that bridge agraffes permit efficient transmission of sound from the strings to the soundboard, resulting in a very well-sustained tone. Similar results are noted with the brass agraffe used by Sohmer into the 1930's. Since the strings do not need to bear down heavily on the bridges (a force of 600 to 1200 pounds = 2.7 to 5.4 kN in conventional pianos), bridge agraffes may also help preserve the crucial upward curve, or "crown," in the soundboard.

The Astin-Weight piano company of Salt Lake City, Utah has introduced two related innovations to the upright piano. Their purpose is to obtain the largest possible soundboard, and indeed, Astin-Weight soundboards cover the entire rear surface of the piano. This is made possible by placing the pinblock forward of the soundboard, and using a peripheral metal frame instead of back posts. The Astin-Weight piano is said to produce a very rich tone, not to every listener's taste but greatly prized by Astin-Weight owners.

The Fandrich & Sons piano company of Stanwood, Washington was set up to produce pianos with the "Fandrich vertical action", a new kind of piano action developed by Darrell Fandrich and Chris Trivelas. It is intended to provide the same sensitivity of touch to upright pianos that is available in grands. Currently, Fandrich and Sons installs the Fandrich action in pianos made by the Klima firm, in the Czech Republic.

The Borgato workshop, in Bagnolo di Lonigo, Italy, has produced a very large double piano with pedal board, as on an organ. The bass piano, operated by the pedals, sits under the main piano, and the damper pedals of the two are coupled. This instrument permits the performance of a variety of works written by classical composers for pedal piano. Borgato pianos also feature four strings per note in the treble section. The fourth string is actually struck, and is not an aliquot string as in Blüthner pianos.

Borgato pianos also are notable for having five pedals: the three ordinary ones (see piano), plus pedals lifting the dampers for only the treble or only the bass notes. Strictly speaking, this is not an innovation, since this feature was present in the 18th century pianos of Gottfried Silbermann.

The Fazioli piano company of Sacile, Italy has taken the step of selling pianos with two (or more) actions. The idea is that different actions can be regulated and voiced according to the requirements of particular players or musical styles. Since piano actions are built as a single unit, they can be removed or inserted with just a few minutes' work..

Fazioli has also made bold efforts in increasing the sheer size of the piano: their model F308 is the largest piano currently built, being 10 feet 2 inches (3.08 m) long and one and a half times as heavy as today's concert standard, the Steinway Model D.

Both Fazioli and Mason and Hamlin (of Haverhill, Massachusetts) employ tunable duplex scaling. The idea behind duplex scaling, invented by Theodore Steinway in 1872, is that those portions of the string that fall beyond the bridge can be interrupted with additional contact points, instead of simply damping them with cloth. This causes them to resonate at frequencies that (with proper design) can enhance the sound of the piano as a whole. The starting point of Fazioli and Mason and Hamlin's innovation is that the tuning of these short stretches of free string must be done with great accuracy to achieve the full intended effect. In previous duplex scale designs, the contact points were determined in advance, during the casting (from molten metal) of the plate. Thus, small variations in casting were liable to produce imperfections in the length of the duplex string lengths. With tunable duplex scaling, these lengths can be set precisely at the factory, thus compensating for small variations in plate dimensions. In principle, then, tunable duplex scaling should produce a perfected, fully reliable implementation of Theodore Steinway's original idea.

The Magnetic Balanced Action system, invented by Evert Snel and Hans Velo in the Netherlands, permits variable touch according to the player's preference. The idea of the system is to use the force of magnets, whose position is adjustable, to regulate the motion of the keys, rather than fixed weights. This system is now a factory option on Fazioli and on Petrof pianos, and can be custom installed on other pianos.

The Schimmel piano company, something of a free spirit among the great pedigreed German piano firms, has made bold experiments with the appearance of the piano. These include a grand piano whose rim, lid, and other case parts are made of transparent plastic. The acoustic properties of the acrylic material used are apparently excellent. However, the somewhat lurid--albeit quite resplendent--appearance of the acrylic piano, as well as its high cost, have kept it a novelty item in the Schimmel lineup. Schimmel has also teamed up with artists Otmar Alt and Luigi Colani to produce other pianos of breathtakingly unconventional appearance.

Digital innovations

Digital technology makes possible a vastly more sensitive and flexible version of the old player piano; for instance, the modern digital player piano can record as well as play. These pianos are often called 'hybrid pianos', as they have characteristics of both acoustic pianos (the piano sound is made by hammers on strings) and digital pianos (record/playback capability, as well as synthesizer and audio sound capability). Currently, five major manufacturers compete in this market; see links below.

Further afield, the stringless electronic keyboard and digital piano continue to make progress. From their inception, these instruments have far outperformed the piano in flexibility of function; ultimately, research already in progress may make it possible for them some day to equal or exceed the piano in dynamic range, sensitivity of touch, or perhaps even quality of tone.

Latest Developments

Susan Hallbeck, associate professor of industrial and management systems engineering, and assistant music professor Brenda Wristen are studying how a smaller piano keyboard may prevent stress injuries in small-handed pianists. (A small-handed pianist’s hand spans eight inches or less from the thumb to the pinky finger.)

The 7/8 keyboard is a smaller keyboard that comes attached to its own action and stack that contains the moving parts and hammers that strike the strings. To switch between a conventional keyboard and a 7/8 keyboard, the musician slides out the action and replaces it with another.

“The fundamental premise of ergonomics is to fit the task to the user, not the user to the task,” Hallbeck said. “Thus, having a keyboard that fits the player and not the other way around just makes sense.”

Wristen became interested in conducting a formal study after discovering that her upper back and neck muscles felt less fatigued after playing on a 7/8 keyboard. Her playing also improved.

Hallbeck and Wristen’s study compares whether a smaller keyboard is easier for small-handed pianists to use than a conventional keyboard. The researchers completed their initial data collection in November 2005. The study included 26 expert and intermediate pianists with small hands.

Each pianist practiced the same piece of music for 10 hours on a conventional keyboard or the 7/8 keyboard. After practicing, the musicians had three chances to play a trial piece on the instrument they practiced on and were asked to choose their best performance. Then the participants switched instruments.

Hallbeck and Wristen asked the musicians to spend 30 minutes practicing and getting acclimated to their new instrument. During this time, the pianists played the same excerpt at five-minute intervals and played practice music between the trials. While they played their assigned excerpts, electronic devices recorded the pianists’ muscular exertion and joint angles. Hallbeck and Wristen discovered that the musicians who learned the trial piece on the 7/8 keyboard had a harder time using the regular keyboard. Their accuracy and technique was better on the smaller keyboard.

“There are a number of injured pianists and others who do not become professionals; rather, they remain devoted amateurs due to repertoire that is beyond their capability,” Hallbeck said. “Most of our subjects commented that they had never been able to play a 10th in their life. They just looked down at their hands in awe as they did something for the first time.”

Results from the pilot study were presented at the 49th annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society and will be published in the journal “Medical Problems of Performing Artists.”

The researchers’ next step is to study how the 7/8 keyboard could be used to teach piano to children, who naturally have small hands.

The initial study was funded through a $20,000 interdisciplinary grant from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Research Council and a $5,000 grant from the Hixson- Lied Endowment Fund.

Resources

Links to the companies mentioned above

Digital player pianos

Other links

Book

External links

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