Taking Apart the Piano

Every year, I set aside at least one lesson to explain to students how a piano works. We take apart the piano! Okay, we really don’t take apart the piano, but we open them up and see the inner workings. 

The piano is one of the few instruments in which the musician is often not taught how it works and is actually discouraged from most types of maintenance. Don't get me wrong, it is always best to hire an experienced technician to work on your piano for tuning and repairs, but it is also good for us to know a little about the inner-workings of the piano. 

For beginning or younger students, I focus this discussion on the concept of the hammer striking the strings, the differences in notes and number of strings per note, as well as the una corda and damper pedals. Seeing how the hammer strikes the strings helps a student understand why we focus on specific hand position and technique for striking the keys. Seeing what the pedals do on a grand piano helps them understand pedals and I’ll rarely have a student continue to call the left pedal the “soft pedal” as they gain a great understanding of why it is called the “una corda.” Even seeing the number of strings is a good jumping point for discussion as to how multiple strings complement each other and create tone. My math or science-loving students usually enjoy a little physics discussion and the harmonic series which can be easily demonstrated with the the sostenuto pedal. 

For more advanced students, it is still good to talk about how the hammers and dampers work. I use a working model of the piano action to discuss this. For an advanced student, understanding the action can make a big difference in our technical command of the piano. 

For an advanced student, it is helpful to actually see pedal techniques such as half-damper or flutter-pedal. We talk about the una-corda sound being much more than a tool to make the sound softer, but might be compared to a violinist playing with a mute.

In my studio, I have a Yamaha Grand Piano and a Yamaha U1 Studio Upright. Students can compare how the action varies from the two pianos and seeing the actions at work enhances this understanding. As pianists, we typically perform on the piano offered us. We usually don’t get a choice. It may be a hard or light action. It may be bright or dull. Repeated notes may speak easily or sluggish. Understanding the piano, helps us be better pianists. The old adage is that "a great pianist makes even a horrible piano sound wonderful."

A final benefit for students is understanding types of pianos to purchase and ones to avoid. We might discuss why the full-size or console-sized upright better than the spinet. We may discuss why a high-quality upright could be a better purchase than even some brand new grand pianos. 

Piano teachers: Teach your students to perform, but also help them to know their instrument. If you are uncomfortable with this, invite a piano technician to lead a class of your students on this topic. Or, do what I do. Take some time to get to know the piano. Read some books on piano tuning and repair. Watch some videos. Talk with piano technicians. Perhaps, you might even develop some skills in tuning and repair. Share that knowledge to help develop musicians that really know the instrument. 

You will definitely raise up student pianists that understand their instrument better as they play. Perhaps you’ll even inspire some of your students to train to be skilled piano technicians and we all know there is a need for that in many of our communities.

---