During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. While undoubtedly subversive, however, it was far from renegade for its own sake, but sprang from many years spent pondering the nature of silence, intentionality, listening and performance.
In , two encounters helped shape his thinking: with the artist Robert Rauschenberg and with the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. The piano was invented by the Italian harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori in Padua in Though the modern piano is the result of centuries of technical refinement, the basic mechanism has changed surprisingly little since Cristofori's day.
The harpsichord was the most popular keyboard instrument prior to the invention of the piano. In a harpsichord, small quills pluck strings that vibrate to make the harpsichord's silvery sound. No matter how hard you press a key, the quill will pluck the string with close to the same force, producing the same sound. In a piano the string is not plucked with a quill, but struck with a felt-covered hammer. When the performer presses a piano key softly, the hammer will strike the string slowly, making a soft sound.
If a performer presses a key hard, the hammer strikes the string quickly, resulting in a loud sound. This is why Cristofori called the instrument a "pianoforte," literally a "softloud. Just think about that. Before the pianoforte you couldn't play a crescendo gradually getting louder or a diminuendo gradually getting softer , or any other dynamic nuance on most keyboard instruments. Needless to say Cristofori's expressive new invention caught on like wildfire. The key, wippen, and hammer assemblies of a grand piano.
Three separate assemblies of different parts are involved in getting the force of the pianist's finger from the key to the string: the key assembly, the wippen assembly, and the hammer assembly.
The key is basically a straight piece of wood that strikes the wippen assembly. The complex wippen assembly transfers the key's force to the hammer, "throwing" it towards the string. A remarkable feature of the piano mechanism is that, because the hammer is thrown by the wippen assembly, it is actually completely out of the pianist's control when it hits the string.
When the piano key is pressed, a "damper" or mute is lifted off the string, allowing the string to sound. When the key is released, the damper is replaced, muting the string.
This way a note only sounds so long as its key is pressed. Piano keys are usually made of spruce because it is a strong and light material. Today white keys have plastic tops and the black keys are made of ebony. In the past, keys were covered in a thin layer of ivory. Though the porous ivory absorbed sweat and oils as you played, it yellowed, chipped, and flaked easily. Ivory was outlawed in the s and so ivory is no longer used on piano keys.
As Vartoukian says, "it's better not to kill elephants for the keys. If you own a piano constructed before the s that has yellowed, slightly porous keys, they are probably covered with ivory. The ivory on piano keys is so thin and ages so quickly that it is almost worthless as a raw material. If you look at a piece of music you will notice that at the beginning there are some numbers which sit on top of each other. This is a time signature, and tells the reader how many beats per bar there are.
The top number tells us how many beats there are per bar, and the bottom numbers tells us what note values to use for these beats. So when you see that the bottom number is a 4, this tells us that we are using crotchets for each beat. Need even more definitions?
Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively".
Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'. Take the quiz.
0コメント