Australian Piano

[Mark Kelly]

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Count the keys: nine octaves. Humans can only hear ten.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/10248930-3x2-700x467.jpg

BTW Huon pine isn't actually a pine, it's a Lagarostrobos but the English tended to name Australian woods after the European wood they resembled, even though we have 20 times as many species of trees here as the whole of Europe.

[Too Tall]

Well, it's beautiful and creative. Long arms will help.

[Bewheels]

That is some serious engineering and craftsmanship.

[Mark Kelly]

A bit of background, but please note I'm not an expert on piano acoustics:

When a piano hammer strikes the strings, it forces vibration in a vertical mode as that is the direction of the strike. In a conventional piano the string mounting, known as an "agrafe" (BTW the same word as used for the binding on a champagne cork during tirage), preferences the horizontal mode so the vibration turns during the sounding period.

Some years ago Stuart (he of the big piano above) developed and patented the "Stuart agrafe" which allows the string to keep vibrating in the vertical mode. I've heard some recordings of music* done on a Stuart vertical mode piano and they do sound wonderful, though I'd be struggling to tell you blind what kind of piano was being played.




*Gerard Willems, a highly regarded local pianist, has done a complete Beethoven sonata cycle on a Stuart piano. It's an excellent recording, it helps that I really like his interpretations.

[Mark Kelly]

Long arms will help.

Well you'll be OK then. As would I, if only I could work out how to get my fingers to co-operate.

[Too Tall]

Well you'll be OK then. As would I, if only I could work out how to get my fingers to co-operate.

I'm curious, since the extra octave exists on a separate sound board or at least fixtured separately is there a unique damper pedal...not that you are the expert on these things but maybe you know and why people fail to use punctuation on extremely run on sentences?

[Mark Kelly]

I don't know. This has four pedals but that is the normal configuartion for Stuart pianos as they have two different types of "soft" pedal: one shifts the mechanism laterally to reduce the strike area, one restricts the hammer motion to reduce the strike force.