3/21/2023 0 Comments Piano octave numbersThanks again for joining us here at Living Pianos. Is 97 the most number of keys on a piano? Not by a long shot! The Australian piano manufacturer Stuart and Sons manufactures a piano with 102 keys! I have not had a chance to play one of these pianos but I would love to have the opportunity. And the extra notes are available if you are so inclined to add them to your music. When you depress the sustain pedal, the extra bass strings resonate adding richness to the tone. The existence of these extra keys and strings enhances the sound of the piano. So why would you even want these other keys if they don’t really serve a purpose for 99% of the music you encounter? There are some pieces composers have written that include those lower notes, but this is very rare. The Imperial Concert Grand Bosendorfer piano has 97 keys! On this particular piano the extra keys have the colors reversed – the black keys are white and the white keys are black so you can distinguish the extra keys from the standard 88 keys. For example, the frequencies 220 Hz, 440 Hz, and 880 Hz are all A’s, but exist in different octaves: A3, A4, and A5 respectively. However, there are pianos made today that have more than 88 keys! One very important aspect of all music theory is that octaves are specifically defined as ‘doubling’ or ‘halving’ a pitch’s frequency. Harpsichords (the predecessor to the piano) had different numbers of keys – sometimes even two keyboards! Near the end of the 19th century, 85 keys became the defacto standard for most pianos.īy the end of the 1800’s the piano had settled on 88 keys as a standard and the vast majority of pianos produced today feature 88 keys. ![]() The earliest pianos had around 5 octave of keys (about 60 keys). ![]() The lines / dashes (-) between letters indicates timing to play the notes. The octave of the lowest C on the piano has number 1, while the octave of the highest C has number 8. The standard number of keys on a piano today is 88 but if you’re familiar with the history of the piano, you know that this standard developed over a long period of time. A C D F G), look at the image below to see where each letter note is on the piano keyboard. Each octave, starting from the note C, has a number.
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