the listening room · no playing required
Before you learn an instrument it helps to know what it is for — what job it does in music, who made it sing, and the one sound that could only ever be this instrument. Bring your ears.
where you've heard it
iNearly every other instrument plays one line at a time. You sing one line. A trumpet plays one line. A piano plays the tune, the chords that sit under the tune, and the bass below that — all at the same moment, from one player. That is why so much music gets written sitting at one: everything a piece needs fits under ten fingers.
It is also enormous. Walk to the far left of the keys and the lowest note is a deep rumble you feel more than hear; walk to the far right and the highest is a tiny ping, like a pin dropped on glass. One instrument covers the whole distance.
the players who shaped it
iiHis keyboard works — The Well-Tempered Clavier among them — are foundational for every keyboard player.
Wrote music that made the piano sing like a voice.
Pianist, bandleader, and one of the great composers of jazz.
Type any of these names into whatever you listen to music on. Ten minutes each is enough to hear three completely different ideas of what a piano is for.
what to listen for
iiiPress the first button and you get a plain little tune, one note at a time — the way a singer would have to sing it. Press the second and you get exactly the same seven notes, at the same speed, but now with a chord and a low bass note held underneath. Nothing about the melody changed. Everything about the music did.
Five notes are ringing in the second version, and a pianist has ten fingers — so ten is the everyday limit, and the sustain pedal quietly lifts it higher. That is the piano's one unbeatable trick: it is the instrument that can be the whole band.
where it came from
ivThe piano was invented around 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori, in Florence. Before it, the keyboard everyone used was the harpsichord, which plucks its strings — and a pluck comes out at the same volume however hard you hit the key.
Cristofori's action hit the strings with hammers instead. Press harder and it plays louder; press gently and it plays softer. The whole invention is right there in the name: it was named for playing both soft — piano — and loud — forte.
v and now — your turn
You have heard what it does. Now be the one doing it — the beginner course starts with a single key and has you playing a tune in about five minutes. And when you want to know why there are exactly twelve keys before it all starts again, the maths is waiting next door.