This week in the studio, we’ve been exploring inside the piano!
As studio members will know, I’m currently taking care of Gustin House’s wonderful Knabe. (I looked up its serial number on the internet, it looks like it was built in 1914.) The piano tuner came to replace a string (C3, or the C below middle C). Since strings come in pairs, he put in a set, This means I had one of the old strings left over after to show to students.
We looked inside the piano and explored the mechanics of the piano. The string replaced was one of the lover notes, one of the ones wrapped in copper wire. Also, we had an example of a hammer and some dampers. It was fun to learn a little bit at the piano mechanics. Exploring the mystery of how a piano works has been an fun activity for students in lessons this week!