What are the Parts of a Piano?

Part of the Video Series How to Play the Piano

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The piano is made up of many intricate parts that combine to produce that great sound. Find out about the different parts of a piano in this free online video music lesson on how to play the piano for beginners.

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Video Transcript

What are the Parts of a Piano?
Hi my name is Omri and today we are going to talk about the parts of the piano. First of all the piano is a percussion instrument. A lot of people wouldn’t classify it that or wouldn’t think that it is classified as a percussion instrument because it plays so many different tones unlike a drum or other typical percussion instruments. Well if we look at the mechanism of a piano it is actually a series of hammers that hit strings. And because they are hammers the harder we push them the louder they are going to be. Each individual note has one or several strings that are tuned to that tone so that the piano actually hundreds of strings producing its tones. Down here we have the peddles and there is typically two or three peddles on a piano. This type of piano is called an upright or a Spinet because of its orientation it is facing upright kind of against this wall as opposed to a Grand piano that’s long. This right peddle always has the same function. It is called the dampener and when we press it the note is sustained. When I let go of the peddle they abruptly end. The middle and left peddles function differently depending on the piano. They are actually meant for Grand pianos and the middle one on an upright will sustain just the lower notes but not the upper notes and the left peddle will make the notes a little bit softer. It is hard to tell sometimes with an upright piano. But with a Grand piano you can actually see the entire board of the keyboard shift as the hammers move to hit fewer strings; so it produces less volume. Of course up here we have eighty-eight keys and they’re sometimes referred to as the notes but the physical part is called the key and they used to be made of Ivory but that hasn’t been true for many decades. We have white keys and black keys and typically people start off and play just the white keys.

About the Expert

Expert: Omri Goldshtrom has been playing the piano for over 10 years. He currently teaches lessons to students of all ages. Read More