Let's Play the Piano With Hammers!

A few weeks ago, I showed you how I take my piano apart and asked what you thought about including this in lessons. I decided to go ahead and give it a try! Last week, I took the front of the piano off before each student came to his lesson. It was fun to watch their eyes get big when they walked around the piano!

I would explain simply how the piano has strings and hammers to make a sound. Most are familiar with stringed instruments like guitars, so they quickly noticed that the piano was "the same." And they were all excited to find out that their piano has hammers inside! (Hence the title of this post...no, I did not let them use real hammers on my piano!! Yikes!)

I let them plunk some keys and watch the hammers, and then I would also show them the dampers on the strings and how those work when you strike a key and when you press the damper pedal. Lights came on at this point with a lot of students. Which is a good thing. :)

When I was done explaining everything and they were done exploring, I had them play a song that they know from memory and just watch the hammers strike. They seemed to enjoy it! Here are a couple doing it:

Then I had to put the front back on so that they would have a place to rest their books for the rest of the lesson. One student was sure she could just lay her book down, but I didn't know how well that would work. :)

It was a fun experiment!! And now I have all kinds of ideas for a group lesson along these lines...a piano tuner could come and show how he tunes the piano and some of the ins and outs of tuning. What student wouldn't like to see his tuning fork?? Whenever anybody learns any other instrument....guitar, violin, etc....they learn how to tune it. Why is the piano any different? Obviously they can't tune their own piano, but I think they should know how it works, anyway. What do you think?

Inside My Piano

Ever wondered what the inside of your piano looks like??

It doesn’t have to be a mystery! The other day I needed to take our church piano apart, and so I thought I would share a few pictures and explanations with you.

Let me say, first of all, I DO NOT recommend doing this by yourself. This post is by no means a tutorial, because every piano is different. I took a class on piano tuning and repair in college, so while I don’t know everything about it, I was taught how to safely take the piano apart. Doing something incorrectly could at best result in rattle sounds when you play, and what is more annoying than a piano that rattles?? If you want to learn how, ask your piano tuner to show you.

So the short story is, don’t try this at home, kids.

My purpose in taking the piano apart was to get underneath the keys. This is a great place to look if you need some loose change. Just kidding. :) There are all kinds of treasures to be found underneath our piano keys, however! Paper clips, money, paper, you name it. If you have keys that do not play well, this could be why! Again, go ahead and ask your piano tuner to pull these keys up and check for treasures underneath. I was lucky enough to find a mouse nest once. ((((((((disgusting!!!!))))))))

Here is how our piano comes apart:

After lifting the top, we had to loosen two screws to get the front piece off:

There’s the screw! Once these are loosened, it is a simple matter of lifting the whole front up and off. This reveals the action of the piano...the hammers, strings, and all that comes with it!

Then we took off the cover over the keys. It’s easiest to just get that out of the way. Ours comes off with just two small screws on each side.

Here are our piano parts all over the floor:

The last thing we needed to take off was the long wooden piece that sits on the top of the visible keys. That comes off with two of these:

and two long screws on the ends:

Ta-da! There are the long keys, ready to be carefully lifted out.

Here is a shot of the keys and the action of the piano:

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Here is the reason we took all this apart:

Each individual key rests on one of these green pads. If you look carefully, you can see that these pads have holes in them. That is because they are disintegrating! We are working on getting those replaced, and improving the “playability” of the piano.

I am interested in knowing if any of you piano teachers ever include “how the piano works” in your lessons? I am thinking of maybe taking the piano apart and showing my students how it works, and then letting them play without the front of the piano on. That way they can watch the hammers strike. I think it would be interesting, especially for those that only play on a keyboard. What do you think?