Great Love

The piano is a mechanical device consisting of 88 keys and three pedals. Those keys, when depressed, activate levers, which in turn, send little hammers flying up to strike metal strings--similar in appearance but very different in actuality--to those on a harp. These strings produce the melodious tones that comprise everything from Chopsticks to Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.The hammers have to hit these strings quickly, then drop away, lest they interfere with the string's happy vibration. If they stayed in contact with the string at all, we would hear a "clunk" instead of a melodious tone. The mechanical action allowing the hammer to drop instantly away from the strings is called the "escapement."

Furthermore, as soon as you release the key, these small pads called dampers drop down to stop the string's vibrations. This is why as long as you keep the key depressed, the note is sustained, and as soon as you let go, the key returns to its position and the note fades out.

However, the purpose of one of the pedals--the one to the far right--is to lift the dampers and prevent them from falling. This is the "Sustain" pedal. It causes those notes to peal like chimes.

There's a lot more. There's a sounding-board to amplify the sound so we can hear it, and a vast difference, of course, between cheap pianos and the really expensive ones. In the building where I practice my lessons, there are both cheap pianos and really good ones. For the past few weeks, we've been trying to always find the good ones. There's a big difference.

All this has changed with the advent of the electric piano. In this modern age of miracles, sounds have been digitized and electronically recreated. The action of the hammer has been replicated in the better models. Even touch-expression--notes sounding louder when you hit the keys harder and softer when you touch them gently--has been reproduced with amazing accuracy. Plus with electric pianos, you plug in headphones and don't disturb the neighbors or wake up your roommates. Or if you hate these particular individuals, you can attach killer speakers, crank the volume and blast them into oblivion.

And yet there's no substitute for those big, impressive Steinway Grand Pianos. My gosh, those are impressive creatures. I know an electric piano will never go out of tune, and there are some physically impressive models (Roland especially has recently produced some nice furniture in that line) but my breath stops short in the presents of an ebony Grand.

One day, my beauty, one day.