Keyboard Instruments
Keyboard Instruments Fast Facts
The keyboard is simply a device for giving your hands control over four basic methods of making pitched sounds. Three of these have been around since the dawn of time: striking, plucking, and blowing. The fourth is more recent: electronic signal generation. Originally, keyboard instruments didn’t even have keyboards. In medieval times, for example, church organs consisted of pipes that were opened and closed by large, heavy levers that had to be punched with a clenched (and gloved) fist. This was hardly conducive to refined performance and sometime during the Middle Ages this method was replace by a system of keys. The first keyboard simply offered a continuous run of notes that divided an octave into seven, i.e., white notes only. Since these early keyboards had no sharps or flats, names were usually etched onto the keys so you could identify the notes.
A Brief History of Keyboard Instruments
In 1698 Bartolomeo Cristofori, keeper of instruments at the Florentine Court of the Medici, started to design a harpsichord that would play both loud and soft, applying the principles of the dulcimer (a four-sided box of strings using hammers held in the hand to generate sound). By 1700 the prototype had been built, being followed by a perfected model in 1709. Cristofori’s invention was created as a result of a specific request from Prince Ferdinand, who wished to make the harpsichord more expressive. What resulted was the creation of a totally new instrument allowing dynamics and timbre to be controlled by the performer through the keyboard. The first ‘piano action’ had been invented. The basic design and action of Cristofori’s piano was so complete that it has survived for hundreds of years.
The first uprights were introduced from Germany
around 1770, made by Christan Ernst Friederici at Gera. Between 1795 and
1830 an instrument called the orphica was produced (looking remarkably
like a portable synthesizer controller such as the Moog liberation or
Clavitar), which could be slung across the shoulder and played almost
anywhere, being a miniature acoustic piano with a Viennese-type action.
The English called the orphica the ‘weekend piano,’ as it could be played
outside.
Around 1800, with the growing popularity of piano music, larger
and louder pianos were required to cope with bigger venues and audiences.
Piano strings became tighter and thicker, making it necessary for structural
reinforcement to cope with the additional stress. The first complete iron
frames were made by Babcock in 1825 and were soon introduced into other
parts of the world, becoming the norm by about 1860.
The modern acoustic piano bears most of the design features of these early instruments, although almost three centuries of improvements have refined it vastly. Despite the technological revolution in keyboard instrument design that has taken place this century; the piano remains the first love of many musicians.
Touch sensitivity is an important part of getting
expression out of an instrument. The way you pluck the strings of a guitar
of bass will change the quality of the sound from loud to soft or from
bright to percussive. With its weighted, wooden keys, the acoustic piano
requires more physical effort to play than the plastic keys of later electronic
keyboards, but it also gives you greater control over the nuances of the
sound.
With quieter pieces, for example, you can employ different stroke techniques,
with your hands either ‘pushing’ into the keys as you play to produce
a slightly non-focused, almost string-type sound; or with your hands ‘pulling’
away from the keys to produce a clear, more bell-like sound. If you let
your hands fall onto the keys, punching from the shoulder, you can get
almost brass-like stabs. And very subtle technique known as after
touch can be sued to dampen the note or to give the faintest repeat.
Although these techniques tend to apply more to classical playing than
to rock, they do give some idea of the unique versatility of the keyboard.
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