Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine (acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell , or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard).
The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ invented in the third century BC. [2] The keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian (late 4th century), who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu . . . intonet, that is "let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty ...
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano , organ , and various electronic keyboards , including synthesizers and digital pianos .
Electric keyboards began with applying electric sound technology. The first was the Denis d'or stringed instrument, [5] made by Václav Prokop Diviš in 1748, [6] with 700 electrified strings. In 1760, Jean Baptiste Thillaie de Laborde introduced the clavecin électrique, an electrically activated keyboard without sound creation.
The aftertouch feature allows keyboard players to change the tone or sound of a note after it is struck, the way that singers, wind players, or bowed instrument players can do. On some keyboards, sounds or synth voices have a preset pressure sensitivity effect, such as a swell in volume (mimicking a popular idiomatic style of vocal performance ...
Keyboards that use moving weights similar to the motion of hammers without relying on springs are called hammer-action. The hammer weights may vary by the note being played, similar to how keys in the bass register of the piano have heavier hammers to sound the thicker strings than those in the treble register; these are known as progressive ...
This is a list of the fundamental frequencies in hertz (cycles per second) of the keys of a modern 88-key standard or 108-key extended piano in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A 4), tuned to 440 Hz (referred to as A440).
A digital piano is a type of electronic keyboard instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to the traditional acoustic piano, both in how it feels to play and in the sound it produces. Digital pianos use either synthesized emulation or recorded samples of an acoustic piano, which are played through one or more internal loudspeakers.