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The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ invented in the third century BC. [2] The keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian (late 4th century), who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu . . . intonet, that is "let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty ...
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the ...
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano , organ , and various electronic keyboards , including synthesizers and digital pianos .
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, through engagement of an action whose hammers strike strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal temperament. A musician who specializes in piano is called a pianist.
Piano history and musical performance. The modern form of the piano, which emerged in the late 19th century, is a very different instrument from the pianos for which earlier classical piano literature was originally composed. The modern piano has a heavy metal frame, thick strings made of top-grade steel, and a sturdy action with a substantial ...
Description. A virginals is a smaller and simpler, rectangular or polygonal, form of harpsichord. It has only one string per note, running more or less parallel to the keyboard, on the long side of the case. Many, if not most, of the instruments were constructed without legs, and would be placed on a table for playing.
This was a keyboard instrument played with plectra and activated by electricity, but neither instrument used electricity to produce sound. In 1874, Elisha Gray invented an electric musical instrument called the musical telegraph. It made sound from an electromagnetic circuit's vibration. [6]
The clavichord is a stringed rectangular keyboard instrument [1] that was used largely in the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. [2] Historically, it was mostly used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. [2]