Piano (continued)

A piano, unlike most other musical instruments, has a separate string for every note. In a ‘grand piano’, the cover over the keys is propped open – you can see the strings, and the little hammers that bring the string to life when the pianist presses a key, and the pads that mute the sound when the piano player releases the key. The keys are traditionally black and white. There are foot pedals with which you can vary the softness and the duration of sound.

What I like about a piano is that you can see with your eyes the distance between two sounds. You can see with your eyes which notes are related. All of the ‘C’ notes are white keys just to the left of the paired black keys. The piano brings something that is auditory to the visual and tactile senses. You can see with your eyes and feel with your hands how different harmonies are linearly spaced. You might recognize a chord is the same as an arpeggio, only with all the notes played at the same moment in time (a collapsed arpeggio). Unlike with a chord, in an arpeggio, each note is not only separated by distance, but by time. (If you think of music as a multi-dimensional experience, there is a certain architecture or framework to it, galaxies of notes in motion.)

Some instruments (trumpet, flute, piccolo) you can only play one note at a time. With a piano you can play as many notes at one time as you have fingers. Given also the gorgeous sounds that resonate from hammered strings, there are innumerable ways to create an infinite diversity of sound and music with the wonderful piano.

What it's really all about, though, is that the piano player can express sounds through the strings of the piano that affect our minds, and the strings of our hearts.