Piano Video Lesson: Why Aren't Keyboards Divided Into an Even Number of Octaves?

This is livingpianos.com, and I'm Robert Estrin bringing you a viewer question. Raymond asks, "On an 88 key piano, the lowest note is A and the highest is C. Why aren't keyboards divided into an even number of octaves starting ending on C, or why don't keyboards go from A to A?" This is actually a very good question because it seems so logical. In fact, if you ever look at five octave keyboards like synthesizers and other portable keyboards, they're almost always a regular number of octaves. From C to C, typically five octaves or four octaves. So why aren't pianos built that way?

Well, a little bit of historical context is an order. If you go way back before the piano was even invented, there were harpsichords with different numbers of keys and even different starting and ending points on the two keyboards, which is a whole story unto itself. But the earliest pianos had a limited range of keys, typically around five octaves, although it varied and it was typically around F or G or somewhere around that range, and you might wonder why. Well, it's because those are the sounds those instruments were capable of producing.

If you look at all the works of Mozart and Haydn, for example, they never really exceed that approximate range, like the famous K545 C major Sonata of Mozart. It's kind of remarkable to think that all of the music that they wrote was in this confined to this number of keys, because the piano just didn't have more keys than that.

Well, Beethoven worked closely with instrument builders expanding the range of the piano, which was no easy task because as you get higher, for example, the tension on the strings is enormous. So they started reinforcing the frame of the piano with metal, which eventually led to the full cast iron frame like we have today. Now, Beethoven never reached the full 88 keys in his lifetime, but it's so interesting to see how the evolution of his music was affected by the capabilities of the instruments. Early Beethoven had a much, much narrower range of keys than later Beethoven.

So you might wonder how do we settle up on this? In the 19th century, late in the 19th century, most pianos ended at the highest A, and yet they went down to the lowest A, so there was a symmetrical keyboard in terms of the number of octaves. So eventually that high C became more and more common until that became the standard. Now, you might wonder, why doesn't it go higher or lower? Well, to answer that question, there are a couple of instruments out there that do explore lower notes. The famous Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand, for example, goes all the way to C below the low A. And for you to be able to hear what that sounds like, I can do that with software for you so you could hear those low notes and you could see what they sound like.

Well, here's the lowest note of the piano. That's the lowest A. So we start going down from there, the A flat and you don't have this on your piano, unless you have a couple of select instruments of the world. Already, that sounds pretty strange. You're not used to hearing a note. It's going back up to C and down chromatically. So those are the lowest notes of our piano.

Now, venturing forth to the A flat, G, F sharp. It sounds a bit unearthly, doesn't it? Because the vibrations are so slow, you start hearing the separate vibrations instead of the pitch of the sound. Let's see what an F sounds like. Pretty strange, huh? And E, our brains almost don't perceive it as pitch anymore. That's E flat. To give you a context, this is the E flat at octave higher. Together, it almost sounds like something. Then the D, D flat, and finally, the lowest note on the Bosendorfer Imperial, the low C below the low A.

I don't know about you, but I kind of just hear kind of the vibrations. It's hard to discern pitch there, which is one of the reasons that most instruments don't venture below that low A. Now, there is another instrument that also goes down to that low C and that is the Stuart and Sons. Stuart and Sons from Australia has 108 key piano that goes all the way down below that low C, actually, no, that just goes to the low C. I don't think there is an instrument that goes any lower than that. If any of you know of any, but this software can go lower. So let's see what sound like going below the low C an octave below that. Here's that low C again, an octave below the lowest C on the piano, and going down from there to B, B flat, and finally, A, below the lowest A on the piano.

There it is, the lowest A on the piano, sounds kind of high now, doesn't it compared to. But if you play it as an octave, it almost is usable. But of course, those instruments have those low notes, not just for those rare times when you want to take advantage of a lower octave. I know there's a couple of places in the literature where it'd be really nice at least to have that low G or F in certain works where it would make a lot of sense, but it's also because whenever you depress the sustained pedal, all the dampers are released allowing those strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving more richness to the overtones.

Now, what about the other end of the spectrum, going higher than the highest note of the piano? Well, Stuart and Sons actually has a piano that goes higher than the high C. It goes all the way up to the high B, almost an octave above the highest C, and my software doesn't go quite that high, but I can let you hear some notes above the highest C of the piano. So that's the highest notes we have.

What does it sound like higher than that? Well, here's the C sharp, D, D sharp, E and then we finally have on my software here F. It almost sounds like a note. That's an octave above. Playing it together, you almost get a sense. Naturally the big hindrance with those really high notes, even the highest notes on the piano are they just don't last that long. That's about all you get. The G. Here's even the second to highest C on a piano. It doesn't last very long. That's why pianos don't even have dampers for all those high notes. Dampers end on pianos somewhere in the D sharp to G range, somewhere in here, the last damper.

Let's see this software piano, let's see where the last damper is. Ah, did you hear that? That note does not have a damper. Yamaha's, I believe, most Yamaha's have dampers up to G. Baldwins and Steinways, typically, the last note that has a damper is D sharp so this note would not have a damper on a Baldwin. Do you need it there? Well, it does ring quite a bit. And you'll find on different pianos, the dampers end in different places, but those extremely high notes have limited value because they don't last long enough to use them melodically. They're really just percussive little pecks of sound.

Even the highest C in a piano, but when you get higher than that, it sounds really tinkling, doesn't it? And once again, those very, very low notes, going lower than the lowest, that's the lowest note of a piano, that low A. And here's an octave lower. Woo, unearthly, huh? The lowest note on an Imperial Bosendorfer or a Stuart and Sons is this low C.

And you can hear for yourself why they've settled in on A to C. It's a musically useful range of tones for the technology brought to bear, and that's the simple answer to your question, Raymond. Thanks for that very insightful question. I hope you've enjoyed this. And my Patreon members get to ask questions for videos. You can consider joining. Thanks again. I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Lots to come for you. If you like this, you can subscribe here on YouTube, as well as livingpianos.com. See you next time.

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Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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