Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
On a mechanical-action organ, a coupler may connect one division's manual directly to the other, actually moving the keys of the first manual when the second is played. Some organs feature a device to add the octave above or below what is being played by the fingers. The "super-octave" adds the octave above, the "sub-octave" the octave below. [1]
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).
Other organs positioned the black keys on the same level and depth as the white keys. The first pedal keyboards only had three or four notes. [ 3 ] Eventually, organ designers augmented this range by using eight notes, an approach now called a "short octave" keyboard, because it does not include accidental notes such as C ♯ , D ♯ , F ...
The Halberstadt organ was the first instrument to use a chromatic key layout across its three manuals and pedalboard, although the keys were wider than on modern instruments. [30] The width of the keys was slightly over two and a half inches, wide enough to be struck down by the fist, as the early keys are reported to have invariably been ...
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). [1] [2] Every octave is made of twelve steps called semitones.
A typical, full-size organ manual consists of five octaves, or 61 keys. Piano keyboards, by contrast, normally have 88 keys; some electric pianos and digital pianos have fewer keys, such as 61 or 73 keys. Some smaller electronic organs may have manuals of four octaves or less (25, 49, 44, or even 37 keys).
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Organ pipes are physically organized within the organ into sets according to note and timbre. A set of pipes producing the same timbre for each note is called a rank, while each key on a pipe organ controls a note which may be sounded by different ranks of pipes, alone or in combination. The use of stops enables the organist to selectively turn ...