Acoustical Mechanisms of the Piano

Thomas Richards November 11, 2013

The pianos development began as a search for a harpsichord with a dynamic range that allowed musicians more expression. The invention of the modern piano is credited to the harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori of Florence in 1709 [1], he used a striking hammer mechanism instead of the plucking action of the harpsichord, to allow players to vary the volume of notes. Cristoforis original design has changed a great deal in the 300+ years since then, with more modern materials and mechanisms allowing for louder and more compact pianos. Before one can understand the complex acoustical mechanisms that make a piano sound the way it does, a single string suspended between two points must be examined. To make this model of a string some assumptions must be made i.e.: the string has no resistance to bending the tension in the string is constant along the whole length of the string and remains constant even when it is vibrating the displacements that the string is subject to are relatively small compared to the length of the string When this string is struck by a hammer it causes a part of the string to accelerate, which causes two waves travelling in opposite directions along the string. These two waves both reect at the end of the string where there is a rigid boundary. How the wave reects is shown in gure 1, this shows how one can observe the reection of the wave at the end of the string to be an upside down wave travelling along an imaginary string on the opposite side of the boundary. When these two waves meet at the boundary, the real wave transfers to the imaginary string and the imaginary wave travels onto the real string. The piano string has 2 of these boundaries, one at each end of the string. This system of reection happens at each boundary for both the imaginary and real waves that travel along the string. When the waves reect they will travel back towards each other, meet and interact. This interaction is called interference, and results in either a reduction of the height of the wave - termed destructive interference- or an increase of the height of the wave - termed constructive interference. Destructive interference happens when the waves are on opposite sides of the string, constructive interference when the waves are both on the same side. Figure 2 shows a more complex wave motion in the string. It can be seen for the rst few milliseconds, the hammer impacts the string creating a hump in the string. This is actually the two waves (discussed earlier) it is producing piled on top of one another. As the hammer does not strike in the centre of the string, the left travelling wave reaches its boundary and reects rst, with the right wave travelling ahead of it. This causes the attened top of the hump to form when both waves are propagating in the same direction. The size of the resulting hump is related to where the string is struck in relation to the closest boundary. If the hammer strikes the string near the boundary it will produce a smaller hump than if it is far away.

Figure 1: Diagram of how a string reects at a rigid boundary [2]

Figure 2: Diagram of a propagating wave in a string [6] The pitch of the note that the string produces is dependant upon the frequency at which it vibrates. The frequency is dependant on many things such as the length, weight and tension of the string. A long and heavy string will produce a lower pitch note than a light and short string. This is why a piano has shorter and lighter strings for the higher register and longer heavier strings for the low notes. Adding this variation in weight allows the tension in the strings to be

fairly constant (within about 20% of each other [3]). The vibrating motion is created by the mechanism described previously, with the two waves interacting. However the frequency that we perceive as the pitch of the note, is not the only frequency at which the string vibrates, it also vibrates at its harmonics. Harmonics are other frequencies of vibration due to a dierent motion of the string, these motions are shown in gure 3. The lowest harmonic is known as the fundamental where there is a single large hump in the string with no movement at the boundaries (shown at the botton of gure 3). The mechanism that controls the hammers in a piano is arranged across the strings so that the position at which the hammer strikes the strings varies with the string length(i.e. the high notes are struck nearer their centre). This causes an eect that prevents some of these harmonics forming. Figure 3 shows a basic representation of the rst 7 harmonics of a string. As one can see in gure 3 there are points along the string where there will be no movement, these are known as nodes. If the string is struck at the exact position of a node, the corresponding harmonic will not be produced. Figure 4 shows the a frequency against sound level plot for dierent hammer positions. It can be seen that there are large dips in the sound level at certain frequencies for some hammer positions, but not others, these dips are caused by certain harmonics being missing.

Figure 3: Modes of a string [4] When a piano string is struck the note slowly dies away, as energy is lost from the string. The dominating mechanism by which the energy is lost is dierent for high and low strings. Lower strings are thicker and heavier so most of the energy they lose is due to them moving the bridge and the soundboard, whereas the higher strings are lighter and lose most of their energy through what are known as viscous losses. Viscous losses are to do with the string having to force its way through the air. As it moves drag will pull it back, much like what happens to a formula 1 car driving at high speeds. It aects the lighter strings more due to their light weight, because as they move they have less momentum pushing them through the air. This dierence causes the higher strings to sound for a shorter length of time than the lower strings.

Figure 4: Graphs showing the missing harmonics for strings struck at dierent points [2] When the hammer strikes the string in a piano it follows through and stays in contact with the string for a short time due to its mass. For the low strings in a piano the hammer strikes and bounces back from the string before the waves it creates have time to travel back to where the hammer is. However for the higher strings where the time it takes for the wave to travel to and from the boundary is shorter, and hence the hammer may still be touching the string when the wave reaches it. This causes an eect on how the note sustains, in the high strings the hammer being in contact with the string dampens the string, much like if one compares the length of a note produced from a glass with and without someone holding it, this causes the note to decay away much more quickly than a lower string. The soundboard in a piano (shown in gure 5) is a large at surface that a curved bridge is attached to. Grand piano soundboards are traditionally made from a large thin at sheet of spruce with its grain running parallel to the strings [1]. The grain structure of wood causes the material itself to have dierent stiness in dierent directions. To counteract this feature of the material piano makers add strips of thicker wood called ribs to the soundboard 90 to the direction of the grain. The ribs add stiness in the cross grain direction to achieve a more constant stiness across the whole soundboard. The shape and stiness of a soundboard will both have a large eect on how it vibrates at dierent frequencies. Similar to how a string vibrates the soundboard will vibrate at certain frequencies, known as modes. If one of these modes is at a similar frequency to one of the strings vibrating it will move a lot more than at other frequencies, this causes the soundboard to amplify certain frequencies. The strings of the piano are held in place by a pin at each end of the string, however at the end of the string opposite to the ngerboard there is a bridge suspending the string, with the pin only there to keep the tension (this is the hitch pin in gure 5). The bridge of the piano is the mechanism by which the vibrating motion of the string is transferred to the soundboard of the instrument. The basic mechanism with which the soundboard amplies the string motion is the string vibration transferring through the bridge and vibrating the soundboard. As the soundboard is a much larger surface than the string it moves more air therefore causing more sound than the string by itself. 4

Figure 5: Cross section of a pianos mechanism [2]

The denition of an octave in the American Heritage Dictionary [5] is The interval between any two frequencies having a ratio of 2 to 1. so by this denition the C above middle C should have double the frequency and so on, however in a piano this is only true for the notes in the middle of the pianos range. Pianos are actually tuned so that the high octaves and low octaves are wider i.e. the low notes are tuned slightly lower and the highs higher. There are a few dierent reasons for this, arguably the most important is psychological as most people will think a piano tuned to perfect octaves sounds out of tune when very high and very low notes are played, this has been shown in dierent studies [1]. A modern grand piano has a set of 88 keys, however it has around 243 strings. This is due to some notes having more than one string struck by the mallet at once, these are known as unison strings. The extreme low notes have only one string but other strings have 2 or 3 strings per note, this introduces an interesting eect as the note dies away. When the three strings are struck for the rst few cycles all the strings move the soundboard in unison therefore increasing how much it moves and the volume of sound produced. After a few cycles the strings start to become out of time with one another, due to tiny dierences in their vibrating frequency, which reduces the movement of the bridge as the waves are reaching it and reecting at dierent times. As discussed earlier the more the soundboard moves the more energy is removed from the string, so for the rst few cycles the volume of sound, and also the rate at which the sounds volume drops, is much higher than for the time that the strings are not in time with one another, which is known as a compound decay (i.e. the note decays at one rate then changes to another at a certain time). The other reason for this compound decay is due to the string not only vibrating in one axis. Figure 1 shows the string vibrating up and down but it can also vibrate in and out of the page. As the string is struck the rst few cycles do vibrate just in that one plane but later on the string vibrates in a mixture of both directions. When the string vibrates up and down the soundboard moves more and therefore takes more energy away from the string, similar to the coupled string action described earlier. A piano hammer is generally a wooden mallet shape covered in felt. By covering the mallet in felt an interesting eect occurs when comparing a string struck lightly to one struck with more force. When the string is struck lightly the mallet acts as one would expect with the felt causing the impact surface to be soft, whereas if the string is struck harder such as when playing loudly, the felt can compress causing the mallet to essentially be a harder surface. This eect causes the string to sound dierent, similar to if you strike a glass with a hard object such as a pen and then a softer object like the eraser on the end of a pencil, just by observation one can say that the harder object makes a harsher sound with more high frequencies than its softer counterpart, and this eect remains true for the piano mallet. One of the precursors to the piano is called the harpsichord, the main dierence between the two acoustically is that the strings are plucked by a mechanism rather than struck with a mallet. 5

The reason for the development from this system to the piano (discussed earlier) is the ability to vary the volume of sound. The plucking mechanism is similar to what you would do when plucking a guitar, there is a wooden jack that when the strings are depressed rises up past the string. Attached to this jack is a plectrum (small exible piece) that will come into contact with the string. This plectrum will move the string a certain amount and then release it suddenly, causing waves in the string. This action causes the string to vibrate dierently to when a piano hammer hits a string (shown in gure 2) the plectrum instead causes a motion seen in gure 6.

Figure 6: Diagram of string motion with a plucked string [2] One can see from the plucked string in gure 6 that plucking the string causes a very dierent vibration motion. This dierence in string motion is one of the factors along with others, such as the construction of the soundboard and the types of strings used, that cause the harpsichord to have a dierent sound or timbre. This essay has focused on the science behind a pianos sound and much of this has an eect on why piano makers use the designs they do in a piano. However relying on the science entirely to understand why players prefer some pianos to others neglects some of the most important factors. Players and audiences all have their own personal preferences when it comes to sound and how the instrument plays. A piano player may have a preference for the type of sound their rst piano or their favourite players piano had regardless of how good the piano is acoustically a player may still not like it, this makes piano manufacturers rely mainly on subjective tests and experience of makers to create a great piano rather than using the science.

References

[1] Fletcher and Rossing, The Physics of musical instruments, second edition, 1998 [2] Strings plucked and struck (Lecture Notes), David Thompson [3] http://www.fosterpianos.co.uk/pianofaq0006.html, accessed on 02/11/2013 [4] http://picturesonnity.net/underlying-principles-of-teslas-physics/string-harmonics-2/, accessed on 05/11/2013 [5] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright 2000 by Houghton Miin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Miin Company. [6] http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5 lectures/introd/introd.html, accessed on 07/11/2013