Five lectures on

THE ACOUSTICS
OF THE PIANO

Anders Askenfelt, editor

1990 Royal Swedish Academy of Music

Contents
Preface..................................................................................................................
Introduction...........................................................................................................
Piano design factors............................................................................................
From touch to string vibration.............................................................................
The hammer and the string................................................................................
The coupled motion of piano strings...................................................................
The strings and the soundboard.........................................................................

Lectures:
Harold A. Conklin Jr.:
Piano design factors - their influence on tone and acoustical
performance
Anders Askenfelt & Erik Janson
From touch to string vibrations
Donald E. Hall:
The hammer and the string
Gabriel Weinreich
The coupled motion of piano strings
Klaus Wogram
The strings and the soundboard

Preface
This volume contains five lectures given at a public seminar at the Royal
Institute of Technology in Stockholm, May 27, 1988. The lectures are based on
accumulated experience in piano design as well as recent experimental and
theoretical studies -all presented in a popular style.
The seminar day was preceded by two days of discussions between the
lecturers and invited representatives from piano manufacturers. Two
representatives from Steinway & Sons, Daniel T. Koenig, Vice President of
Manufacturing, and William Y. Strong, Director of Research and Development,
joined the speakers in a closing panel session at the seminar, answering
questions from the audience and pondering future improvements in piano
design.
The seminar day was closed by a remarkable concert -"From harpsichord to
concert grand" -in which the development of the piano was illustrated. The
stage featured six instruments representing piano design from 1813 to 1980,
and a harpsichord as a reference to the keyboard instruments before the
piano epoch. Three pianists performed on the instruments playing music
contemporary to each instrument. Excerpts from this concert are included on
two gramophone records accompanying this book. The concert was recorded
by The Swedish Radio Company and later broadcasted.
The seminar was initially proposed by the Music Acoustics Committee of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Later a Keyboard Committee of the same
academy was founded, which ran the seminar and additional events in
cooperation with the Department of Speech Communication and Music
Acoustics at The Royal Institute of Technology and the Swedish Radio
Company.
The editing of this volume was considerably facilitated by the continuous and
thoughtful support of my colleague Erik Jansson. Due thanks are given to Si
Felicetti, Gudrun Weiner-Rispe and sa Wallner for patient assistance in the
processing of the manuscripts and figures.
Stockholm in January, 1990
Anders Askenfelt, editor

Introduction
Background
The scientific study of the acoustics of the piano goes back to Hermann von
Helmholtz (1821 - 1894), a German physician and scientist, active in both
neurology, optics, electricity and acoustics. He compiled much of his thinking
about sound, musical instruments and hearing in a book "On the Sensations
of Tone", which still is very much worth reading.(*) Helmholtz's interest in
musical instruments was strongly coupled to the perception of their sound. In
view of his limited measurement equipment - in which his ears played a
central role - he made remarkable contributions to the understanding of the
tonal characteristics of several musical instruments, among them the piano.
In a series of Appendices, of which some have become more famous than the
text itself, he also presented theoretical analyses, including the case of a
string struck by a hammer.
Helmholtz was followed by occasional studies during the decades around the
turn of the century. These early investigators dealt in particular with the
interaction between the hammer and the string, a question which in fact still
not has been completely settled. After important pioneering works on almost
every aspect of the piano in the 40's and 50's, by the use of what we would
call rather modern equipment, the study of the acoustics of the piano has
gained a renewed interest during the last decade. Although many, many
questions remain to be answered, a deeper understanding of the sound
generation in the piano now seems less remote than for several other
instruments, in particular the bowed instruments.
The piano was invented in the 18th century, developed to its present design
during the 19th century - a period during which the bulk of classical piano
music was written - and produced on a large scale and frequently used in all
kinds of music during the 20th century. However, a complete understanding
of the acoustics of the instrument will probably not be reached until the next
century. This may sound a little discouraging from a scientific point of view,
but the same statement holds true for almost all traditional instruments. The
situation is nothing but a result of man's incredible ingenuity in developing
sound sources which not only produce a pleasant sound, but which can also
be intimately controlled by the player. This evolution has resulted in musical
instruments for which the acoustical function turns out to be extremely
complex, despite the fact that the instruments are based on seemingly simple
principles and made of common materials.
The piano is a representative example among the string instruments. The
principle of its function is indeed simple; a felt hammer strikes a metal string
which is connected to a large wooden plate. The string is set in vibration by
the impact, and the vibrations are transferred to the plate which radiates the
sound. However, for none of the steps in this process - the collision of the

hammer with the string, the transmission of the string vibrations to the
wooden plate, and the radiation of sound from the plate into the air - the
physics is well enough understood to permit a detailed description of what
actually happens in the real instrument. In addition, "simple" materials like
felt and wood turn out to have very complex properties - different from
sample to sample! -which further increases the difficulty of describing the
phenomena.
All this would have been enough, but the most cumbersome step is yet to
come. The quality of a traditional instrument is rated using our hearing as the
ultimate test instrument. This means that results of acoustical measurements
should always be viewed in the light of how they relate to the perceived
sound. But this may not even be possible, because the perception of sound,
especially musical sounds, is a field which unfortunately is very poorly
explored. There are still many gaps in our knowledge of the relationship
between physical and perceptual properties of sounds. For this reason, many
interpretations of experimental results must remain on the level of advanced
guesses.
With these difficulties in mind it is not surprising that it was possible to put a
man on the moon before the acoustics of a traditional instrument like the
piano had been thoroughly explained.

Landmarks in piano history

In contrast to most other traditional instruments like the violin or the trumpet,
whose origins vanish in the haze of the past, a specific year and name can be
attributed to birth of the piano. In 1709 the Italian harpsichord maker
Bartolomeo Cristofori replaced the plucking pegs in a harpsichord by small
leather hammers which he let strike the strings. Since this new design
allowed the notes to be played either soft or loud depending on how the key
was struck(**), he called his new instrument gravicembalo col piano e forte
("a large harpsichord with soft and loud"). Soon the grandiose name was
shortened to pianoforte or fortepiano and eventually to piano.
Cristofori's piano was developed from the harpsichord and consequently
rather small and made entirely out of wood. As time passed, however, the
development of larger instruments with more and heavier strings at higher
tensions - all in order to increase the volume of sound - necessitated a more
rigid construction. The wooden frame was successively reinforced with more
and more pieces of iron, and in 1825 the complete cast iron plate was
introduced by the American piano maker Babcock. The iron plate could
withstand the increased string tension, and prevented the instrument from
gradually changing shape as the wooden instruments did. Also, it now
became possible to keep the tuning stable over longer periods of time.
The hammers of the early pianos were tiny, light pieces made out of leather.
However, the introduction of coarser strings at higher tensions demanded

larger and heavier hammers. In 1826, felt hammers were tried for the first
time by an ingenious piano maker in Paris named Pape. The success was
immediate and lasting. An incredible amount of work was devoted to the
development and refinement of the actions. A prominent name in this
connection is the French piano manufacturer Erard who invented the so-called
double repetition action in 1821, which is the type of action still used in the
grand piano. The construction was refined by another French manufacturer
named Herz around 1840. Smaller improvements were made during the
following decades, but since then no essential changes have been made. A
simpler type of action, the Viennese action, lived a parallel life before it
eventually vanished during the first decades of this century.
The compass of the piano has increased successively during its history.
Cristofori's piano had only four octaves. Today a piano with a standard setup
of 88 keys will cover more than seven octaves (A0 = 27.5 Hz to C8 = 4186
Hz), no less than the pitch span of the modern symphony orchestra.
Furthermore, the acoustic output at fortissimo - small as it might seem (of the
order of 0.1 W) - surpasses all other string instruments. This power is enough
to fight even the largest ensemble (although brute force not always is the
best way of making a solo instrument heard above the orchestra).
The early pianos were of the type we now call a grand piano. During the 19th
century the manufacturers discovered a market for smaller and cheaper
models, and squares and uprights were constructed, both instruments being
economy versions of the "real" piano and filled with compromises. Both the
grand and upright pianos as we know them today developed during the 19th
century, which saw a wealth of patent applications during its latter half. The
period of development declined shortly before the turn of the century,
indicating that the construction was perfected, at least for the time being.
Several of the recognized piano makers have had a long tradition including
connections with famous composers. Mozart played a Stein piano from
Austria, Beeethoven preferred an English Broadwood, and Chopin's piano was
made by Pleyel in France - instruments from eminent makers which today,
however, are out of business or operating on a very low level. Liszt and
Wagner, on the other hand, used grands from Steinway & Sons (New York,
Hamburg) which were very close to the instruments we still are used to
hearing 100 years later. Other old, recognized piano manufacturers still in
operation are Bsendorfer (Vienna), Bechstein (Berlin), Baldwin (USA) and
Yamaha (Japan).
The 20th century has been rather quiet as regards the development of the
piano, but a dramatically increased production has manifested itself in an
undesirable way. The beginnings of a lack of suitable wood and felt for piano
purposes can be discerned. This will successively put pressure on the
manufactures to search for new materials which can replace the traditional
ones. This could, or probably will, demand changes in the design of several

major parts in the piano, and the possibility of an active period of

development like the one a century ago cannot be ruled out.

Thinking about the future

Today, the piano is challenged by synthesizers, especially so the economy
versions of upright pianos. These pianos do not perform particularly favorably
either in price or in tone quality compared to dedicated piano synthesizers
("digital pianos, samplers"). Still, the production of traditional pianos is large,
estimated at 900 000 instruments a year worldwide (1988). In particular, the
grand piano seems to continue to attract professional keyboard players of all
genres, apparently for a number of reasons. Although the quality of the sound
probably is the main cause of its fascination, the mechanical response from
the instrument via the keys and the vibrating structure also seems to be very
important.
In view of the rapid development of new instruments based on digital sound
generation, it is tempting to speculate about the future for the piano and the
other traditional instruments. It seems reasonable to suppose that the singing
voice will be recognized as a musical instrument as long as we use speech in
communication. The vowels in speech and singing will familiarize us with
harmonic sounds, i. e. sounds which are associated with a distinctive pitch. As
long as pitch is used as a mean of communication in music, string and wind
instruments will take an exclusive position, because strings and pipes are the
only tools available for generating such sounds mechano-acoustically. A
piano-like instrument with struck strings could thus be assumed to be a
natural member also of a future instrument inventory, should the traditional
way of generating sounds survive.
However, it is also possible that in the future most music will be performed on
electronic devices. This technique gives a much wider freedom in designing
the sounds, including imitation of the traditional instruments. Such imitations
could also include extrapolations to new pitches and dynamic levels, not
accessible by the original instruments. It is hard to deduce a priori if the piano
sounds belong to the group of traditional musical sounds which will survive in
the long run, when transferred to a family of new instruments. However, in
view of the present popularity of the piano and recognizing the slow change
in taste of musical sounds hitherto, it is an advanced guess that pianolike
sounds will be used and enjoyed for at least another century.

Basics of piano acoustics

In this section, a survey of basic piano acoustics is given for those of the
readers who want an introduction to the lectures. The fundamental principles
which govern the acoustics of the piano are presented in a somewhat
simplified form. A detailed and more realistic story of the sound generation in
real pianos follows in the lectures.

Construction
A schematic view of the piano is shown in Fig. 1.
A steel string is suspended under high tension between two supports (the
agraffe or capo d'astro bar and the hitch pin) fastened in the metal frame (the
plate). Close to the hitch pin end, the string runs across a wooden bar, the
bridge, which is glued to a large and thin wooden plate, the soundboard. The
level of the bridge is slightly higher than the string terminations, thus causing
a downbearing force on the bridge and the soundboard. The soundboard is
reinforced by a number of ribs glued to the underside, one reason being to
make the soundboard withstand the downbearing force. The string is struck
by a felt hammer, which gains its motion from the key via a complicated
system of levers, the action.

Fig. 1. Principal sketch of the piano, designating the main components.

String motion
Physically, the string motion can be described in the following way. As the
hammer strikes the string, the string is deformed at the point of collision (see
Fig. 2). The result is two waves on the string, travelling out in both directions
from the striking point. The wavefronts enclose a pulse, or hump, which
gradually gets broader.

Fig. 2. The evolution of the propagating pulse on the

string after hammer impact.

However, as the string is struck close to its termination at the agraffe, one of
the wavefronts (the one travelling to the left in the figure) soon reaches this
end and is reflected. The reflection at a rigid support makes the wave turn
upside down. This inverted wave starts out to the right and restores the string
displacement to its equilibrium level.
The surprising situation has now developed that the wavefront initially
travelling to the left in the figure, has turned into the trailing end of a pulse of
fixed width, propagating to the right towards the bridge. At the bridge, the
entire pulse is reflected, the effect being that the pulse starts out in the
opposite direction upside down. A new reflection at the agraffe turns it right
side up again, and soon the pulse has completed one round trip and
continues out on the next lap. If the key struck happens to be A4 = 440 Hz
("concert A"), the pulse completes 440 such round trips per second.

Pitch, partials and inharmonicity

The propagation velocity of the pulse on the string is determined by the
tension and mass per unit length of the string, a higher velocity the tauter
and lighter the string. The number of round trips per second, the fundamental
frequency (closely related to the perceived pitch), also depends on the
distance to be covered - the longer the string the longer the round trip time
(fundamental period), and hence, the lower the pitch. The pitch of a string is
thus determined by a combination of its length, tension, and mass per unit
length. In particular, string length can be traded off against mass per unit
length in order to reduce the size of the instrument. This can be seen in the
bass section, where the strings are wrapped with one or two layers of copper
in order to make them heavy and thus relatively short. The advantage of a
wrapped string over a plain string is that the mass can be increased without
reducing the flexibility drastically. A piano string need not be perfectly
flexible, but a too stiff a string would have a detrimental influence on the tone
quality as will explained below
A piano string, like all other strings, has a set of preferred states of vibration,
the resonances, or modes of vibration (see Fig. 3). When a string is vibrating
at one of its resonances, a condition which usually only can be reached in the
laboratory, the motion of the string is of a type called sinusoidal. The
corresponding sound is a musically uninteresting sine wave. In normal use,
however, where the string is either struck, plucked or bowed, all resonances
are excited, and the result is a set of simultaneously sounding sine waves,
partials, forming a complex tone.

Fig 3. The four lowest modes (resonances) of a

rigidly supported string. Sometimes these
elementary states of vibration are referred to as
standing waves, because the amplitude contour
does not change with time.

Such a tone is conveniently described by its spectrum, which shows the

frequencies and strengths (amplitudes) of the partials (see Fig. 4, bottom). As
mentioned, the pitch of the tone is related to the frequency of the lowest
member in the spectrum, the fundamental. To be more specific, it is the
frequency spacing between the partials - which for a piano tone is closely the
same as the fundamental frequency - which is the closest physical correlate
to the perceived pitch. The relations between the amplitudes of the partials
and their evolution in time contribute to our perception of tone quality.
The pulse running back and forth on the piano string has a most surprising
connection to the string modes (resonances). It can be shown mathematically
that the travelling pulse is made up of a sum of all the string modes! The
shuttling pulse and an (infinite) sum of string modes of appropriate
amplitudes are equivalent; they are just two ways of representing the same
phenomenon (cf. Fig. 4). So while our eyes will detect the pulse motion (if
slowed down enough by the use of a stroboscope) our ears prefer to analyse
the string motion in terms of its partials or Fourier components, so named
after the French mathematician who first described this equivalence.
Fourier also stated that if the motion is periodic, that is, the same events will
repeat indefinitely with regular intervals, the frequencies of the corresponding
partials will be harmonic. This means that the frequency ratios between the
partials will be exactly 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 . . . , which will be perceived as a sound
with a clearly defined pitch and steady tone quality. The statement can also
be turned the other way around; if the resonance frequencies of a string are
strictly harmonic, the resulting motion of the string will always be periodic.

Fig. 4. Schematic illustration of the equivalence of the

pulse motion on the string (top) and a sum of the string
modes (resonances) (middle). The properties of the tone
are conveniently summarized by its spectrum (bottom),
showing the frequencies and amplitudes of the
components (partials).

In real pianos, the resonance frequencies of the strings are not exactly
harmonic. The frequency ratios are slightly larger than 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 . . . , more
like 1 : 2.001 : 3.005 : 4.012 . . . , which is referred to as inharmonicity. The
inharmonicity in piano strings, which is caused by the bending stiffness of the
steel wire, is a desirable property as long as it is kept within limits. According
to Fourier, the string motion will now not repeat exactly periodically as the
note decays, but change slowly which gives a "live" quality to the note.
Returning to the excitation of the string by the hammer impact, not only the
amplitude of the initial pulse on the string changes with the strength of the
blow, but also its shape. This is due to a remarkable property of the felt
hammer, more specifically the characteristics of its stiffness. The stiffness
increases (the hammer becomes progressively harder to compress) the more
the hammer already has been compressed, a phenomenon referred to as
nonlinear stiffness. This means that a harder blow not only will give a larger
amplitude but also sharper corners of the pulse on the string. Again,
according to Fourier, sharper wiggles in the waveform correspond to more
prominent high frequency partials in the spectrum. Consequently, the piano
tone will attain a different ("more brilliant") tone quality at forte (loud)
compared to piano (soft).

Sound radiation and impedance mismatch

The vibrating string contains all the partials we would like to hear, but
unfortunately the string is in effect unable to radiate sound. The difficulty is
well described by the English saying: "You can't fan a fire with a knitting
needle!" The reader may easily verify this statement by making the

experiment, but can also notice that by means of a large object like a tray
instead of the needle, it is quite possible to fan a fire even from a distance.
The point is that a certain flow of air must be pumped back and forth per
second in order to radiate a "fan wave."
This can be achieved with a limited motion of the tray having a large cross
section, while the needle would have to make unreasonably large movements
to reach the same effect. The acoustic engineer would "explain" the situation
by saying that the radiation resistance of the tray is much higher than that of
the needle. In other words, because of its larger area, the tray is much better
than the needle as a transmission link between the motion of the arms and
the motion of the air.
Returning to the piano, we now realize that as the thin string cannot radiate a
sound wave itself, its motion has to be transferred to a much larger object
which can serve as a more efficient radiator of sound. This is readily done by
incorporating a soundboard in the design, including a bridge as a connecting
element to the string(s). But now the piano designer meets with a new
difficulty. The soundboard is much heavier than the string, which means that
the string will not be able to vibrate the soundboard efficiently and the
vibrational energy will still be trapped in the string. Only slowly the energy
will leak into the soundboard during repeated reflections of the string pulse at
the bridge.
In engineering terms, there is a mismatch between the mechanical
impedance of the string and that of the soundboard. The mechanical
impedance is a property that tells us to what degree an object resists
(impedes) motion. From the point of view of the string, the soundboard has a
very high (input) impedance; it can be thought of as a very heavy stone, or a
very stiff spring, which must be vibrated vigorously. The experienced reader
will certainly agree that this is a most uncomfortable task with little chance of
success.

Loudness versus "sustain"

However, conditions can be improved, or in other words, the impedance
mismatch can be diminished, by increasing the (characteristic) impedance of
the string. This is easily done by making it heavier and by increasing its
tension. But a heavier string usually means a thicker string, which
automatically gives a higher stiffness and hence more inharmonicity, which
soon spoils the desired piano timbre. Piano designers circumvent this problem
in two ways, either by wrapping a rather thin steel core with copper (which
also influences the pitch as mentioned), or by "splitting" a thick plain string
into two or three strings, tuned to (almost) the same frequency, a technique
called multiple stringing. Now the vibration energy is transmitted more
efficiently from the string(s) into the soundboard and the note sounds louder,

perhaps "too" loud. Because here the next difficulty appears; the gain in
loudness does not come for free.
It stands to reason that the pianist cannot feed energy continuously to the
string like the violinist via the bow. Consequently the piano tone is
condemned to decay and die. The question is then how to spend the energy
quantum delivered at the key stroke in the best way. If a loud and thus
necessarily shorter note is desired, the impedance mismatch between string
and soundboard should be decreased by making the strings heavier and
tightening them even harder.
On the other hand, the note can be made longer by using lighter and less
tense strings, but at the expense of loudness. The trade-off between loudness
and duration, or "sustain," of the tone is a difficult problem in piano design,
especially as the impedance of the soundboard can vary wildly from note to
note, due to its inherent resonances. It is easy to get a piano in which some
notes are loud and short while adjacent notes are much softer and longer, a
musically most unsatisfying situation. Fortunately, such fluctuations between
notes as well as the basic conflict between loudness and sustain can be
alleviated in an almost miraculous way by multiple stringing, a phenomenon
which is covered in detail in one of the lectures.

The imperfect soundboard

The soundboard radiates sound much better than the strings do, as
mentioned, but nevertheless it has several severe shortcomings. One occurs
at very low frequencies and is due to the fact that both sides of the
soundboard are directly exposed to the surrounding air.
The reason is the following.
Let the soundboard be moving upwards, pushing the air above its upper
surface together. This causes a temporary excess of air molecules in a region
above the soundboard, a compression, corresponding to an increased
pressure. The underside of the soundboard is also moving upwards, so there
is at the same moment a temporary loss of air molecules beneath the
soundboard, a rarefaction, corresponding to a reduced pressure. As nothing
prevents the compressed air on the upper side from flowing into the lower
region, this pressure difference will soon be neutralized. Half a period later,
when the soundboard is moving downwards, the process repeats but now the
air flows from the lower to the upper side. So, at low enough frequencies - as
long as the motion of the soundboard is slow enough to allow the exchange of
air to take place before the direction of its motion has reversed -the
soundboard will uselessly pump air from its upper side to its lower side and
back again instead of radiating sound. The phenomenon is called acoustic
short-circuiting, and can be avoided by separating the two radiating sides of
the soundboard by an (almost) closed sound box, as in the guitar or in most
harpsichords.

A similar phenomenon can be observed also at higher frequencies. Now the

soundboard no longer vibrates as a unit but spontaneously divides into
smaller vibrating areas separated by thin regions of no motion (nodal lines).
Depending on frequency, the vibrating areas form different patterns; the
higher the frequency, the smaller and so the more numerous are the areas.
These preferred states of vibration are called the eigenmodes (modes), or
often, the resonances, of the soundboard. Adjacent vibrating areas vibrate in
what is called opposite phase, which means that while one area is moving
upwards its neighbour is moving downwards and vice versa. Also in this case,
it is easy to imagine that a useless exchange of air between adjacent areas
can occur instead of the desired sound radiation.

That's all!
This closes the short survey of basic piano acoustics. Once again, it is to be
understood that the explanations are simplified, dealing only with the basic
aspects of the phenomena. Against this background, the lectures that follow
will illustrate the wealth of complications which arise in real instruments.

A note on units
In this volume, the use of metric (SI) units is encouraged. While the use of
meters and kilograms probably will cause English and American readers only
minor problems, the force unit Newton (N) might be less familiar. As a rule of
thumb, 1 N corresponds to the weight of an apple (mass 100 g)!(***)
Likewise, 10 N corresponds approximately to the weight of a mass of 1 kg, for
example 1 litre (1 US quart) of milk.
The naming of octaves and pitches follows the straightforward nomenclature
given by American standards. In this notation the "middle octave" is indicated
by number four (middle C = C4). The lowest note on full size piano is A0 and
the highest C8.

Departure
After these introductory passages, it is time for a detailed voyage into the
world of the acoustics of the piano, guided by experts in the different areas.
The lectures follow in the same (logical) order as they were given on the
seminar day, but as the contributions are essentially independent the readers
may feel free to follow their own paths.
In the first lecture, Harold Conklin, an experienced piano design engineer,
outlines the design principles of the parts of the piano, and makes
comparisons between the early and the modern instruments.
Secondly, Anders Askenfelt and Erik Jansson, researchers in music acoustics
with a focus on string instruments, present measurements from the initial
steps in the tone production, from the moment when the pianist touches the
key up to and including the string vibrations.

Then follows a theoretical study by Donald Hall, a physics professor with a

strong personal interest in keyboard instruments, who describes a computer
model of what actually happens during the collision between the hammer and
the string, and the implications for the string vibrations.
The decay of the piano tone, and in particular the influence of multiple
stringing is covered next by Gabriel Weinreich, also a physics professor with a
strong interest in music acoustics.
Finally, the sound radiation and its connection to the properties of the
soundboard are described by Klaus Wogram, a researcher with many years of
experience in investigating musical instruments, in particular brass
instruments and the piano.

Notes
(*) Hermann von Helmholtz: Die Lehre von Tonempfindungen als
physiologische Grundlage fr die Theorie der Musik, first edition 1862, English
translation of the fourth edition in 1885 by A. J. Ellis: On the Sensations of
Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, reprinted (paperback)
by Dover Publications Inc., New York 1954.
(**) It is true that also the harpsichord can be played at somewhat different
dynamics depending on how the key is depressed. Compared to the piano,
however, the dynamic range is narrow, and dynamics are usually not
prescribed in harpsichord music.
(***) This useful remark was given by one of the lecturers (G. Weinreich) on
an earlier occasion.

Piano design factors

- their infl uence on tone and acoustical performance
Harold A. Conklin Jr

Introduction
My presentation will be an overview of some of the ways in which the design
of a piano affects its tone and acoustical performance. It is not possible in a
short lecture to mention all the important factors, because so many things in
a piano affect its sound. Fig. 1 shows the oldest existing piano, the Cristofori
instrument of 1720, which is in the Metropolitan Museum at New York City. In
a recorded excerpt we can hear this historic instrument followed by the
familiar sound of a contemporary concert grand (sound example 1).

Fig. 1. Cristofori piano of 1720.* (By permission of the Metropolitan Museum

of Art, New York: The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889.

Piano Forte (89.4.1219): compass 4 octaves and one quarter (C - F), Italian,
Florence, 18th C., 1720. Maker:
Bartolomeo Cristofori.).

It is obvious that the extreme

differences in design between
these two instruments produce
extreme differences in tone quality.
From time to time we will refer
again to the oldest piano, but in
order to concentrate on acoustical
factors we will ignore or mention only briefly some of the important
mechanical differences. For example, it is evident that the action of the 1720
piano (see Fig. 2, Pollins 1984) is much simpler and less controllable than that
of a modern grand. After listening to the recording of the old piano one can
say almost with certainty that the music that was played on the modern
instrument could not be played properly with the action of Cristofori.

Fig. 2. Action of 1720 Cristofori piano. (By permission of the Journal of the
American Musical Instrument
Society).

The hammers
The hammers of a piano not only define the instrument: they also are among
the most important factors in determining its tone quality. The hammers in
the 1720 piano have wooden heads which are covered with leather (Fig. 3).
Modern piano hammers are covered with wool felt that is compressed and
stretched over a wooden molding (Fig. 4). Often two layers of felt are used. In
Fig. 5 a modern hammer with the outer felt loosened is shown.

Fig. 3. Hammers of 1720 Cristofori piano (By permission of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art).

Fig. 4 and 5. Modern grand piano hammers as

normal and with
outer felt loosened.

A view of the action from

the 1720 piano is
seen in Fig. 6. Cristofori glued his hammers onto wooden shanks as we are
still doing today. In a modern grand piano the mechanical system of the
hammer head on its somewhat flexible shank exhibits a major vibrational
mode around 260 Hz as installed in the piano. This mode is not normally
audible in the lower half of the piano's compass, but it can be heard in the
treble register, as part of the "knock" component of the tone, beginning
somewhere around A4 (key 49), and can be shown to affect noticeably the
tone of the instrument. An improvement in the tone can sometimes be
obtained by shifting the frequency of this resonance. The motion of the
hammer as it contacts the strings is very complex, and is only recently
becoming clear (Hall 1986, Hall 1987a, 1987b, Hall & Clark 1987, Boutillon
1988, Hall & Askenfelt 1988).

Fig. 6. Cristofori action being played (By permission of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art)

The hammers of the Cristofori piano

are all about the same size. In a
modern piano, the size and weight
of the hammers increase from
treble to bass in order to achieve
the best compromise between tone
quality, loudness, and playability. Fig. 7 shows typical hammer head weights
for a modern grand piano.

Fig. 7. Typical weight curve for modern grand hammer heads.

The largest bass hammers may weigh

around 11 grams. The smallest treble
hammers may weigh as little as 3.5
grams each. Somewhat more output
could be obtained at the extreme
treble end of the scale if the hammers
were somewhat lighter, but this would
increase manufacturing problems. In
the bass, tones having somewhat
more fundamental energy could be
obtained by using heavier hammers but then the piano would become harder
to play. An increase in hammer weight can be counterbalanced statically by
installing additional lead weights near the fronts of the key levers so that the
force required to depress a key very slowly will remain at its nominal value
(usually around 50 grams). However, this cannot compensate dynamically for
increased hammer mass. Key velocities corresponding to higher musical
dynamic levels can require a finger force corresponding to several kilograms,
and the value of this force increases noticeably with an increase in hammer
weight.
The heavier a piano hammer is, the longer it will stay in contact with the
string(s). There is a critical region of the piano's compass, between about G4
and G6 on the keyboard. Within this range the contact time of the hammer
against the strings becomes equal to the roundtrip travel time for the initial
pulse on the strings (Benade 1976). Below this range the hammer leaves the
strings before the arrival of the first major reflection from the far end; above
this range the hammer normally is still in contact. If the hammer is still in
contact at the time of the first reflection, losses occur that decrease the
output of the piano and may cause an undesirable quality of tone. In order to
produce a graceful tone within this critical range, it is important to have an
optimum hammer striking position along the strings, to have the hammer
strike all of the strings of a note equally, and to keep the hammers from being
too heavy. These factors are interdependent. If the hammers in the treble are
too heavy, the tone will not be as loud. If the hammers of the 1720 piano
were to be used in a modern instrument, the tone of the bass and middle
registers would sound too thin and bright, and the treble tone probably would
be harsh.
The hardness of a piano hammer directly affects the loudness, the brightness,
and the overall tone quality of the instrument. In order to produce the best
tone, each hammer must have its hardness within a certain range. Also, the
hardness should have a gradient such that the string-contacting surface is
softer than the inner material. If there is no gradient, the result can be poor
tone or undesirable noise components. In Fig. 8 a special tool called a

durometer is shown in use to measure the hardness and indicate the gradient
of a hammer. This measurement can indicate whether the hammers have the
right hardness to make a good piano tone. You could also find this out just by
listening to the piano, if the hammers were already in place. But by
measuring the hardness first it can be determined in advance whether the
hammers can sound good, and it will be indicated how much work will be
required to voice them.

Fig. 8. Durometer in use to

measure hammer hardness.

Fig. 9 shows the measured

hardness for three different
hammers of similar size and weight.
To demonstrate the relation
between hardness and tone quality
I have made a recording of the tone
produced by each of these hammers when installed at G5 (key 59) in the
same piano (sound example 2). First you will hear the softest hammer played
six times, then the harder hammer, and finally the hardest hammer. (The
amount of difference you hear in the tone may depend on where you are
sitting in relation to the loudspeakers.) As I hope you can hear, the softest
hammer produces a pleasant tone that is perhaps a bit too soft (dark); the
middle hammer produces a significantly brighter and louder tone, and the
hardest hammer produces a still brighter but somewhat harsh tone that
contains excessive noise components.
Fig. 9. Shore A hardness for three hammers.

The optimum hardness for a hammer varies

widely with its keyboard position. In order to
produce tones of uniform loudness all across the
scale, the extreme treble hammers must be
much harder than the middle or bass hammers.
The need to make the hammers harder in the
treble usually begins, probably not by
coincidence, in the critical region where the
roundtrip time becomes equal to the hammer-string contact time.
Fig. 10 indicates approximately how the relative hardness of hammers should
vary across the scale in order to produce tones of equal loudness for an equal

key effort. Of course the optimum value for hardness also depends on how
bright a tone the listener prefers, so this graph gives only a general
indication.

Fig. 10. Approximate relative

hardness of piano hammers for
equal loudness.

Hammers can be "voiced" by a

skilled piano technician to make
them harder or softer, in order to
produce the best tone and smooth response from note to note. In voicing, the
felt may either be softened by piercing it with needles at certain carefully
chosen locations, or it may be hardened, either by filing away the soft outer
felt with sandpaper, or by applying a chemical hardening agent. Voicing has
little measurable effect on the lower partials of bass tones. In the treble, all of
the partials are affected.
Good hammers, properly voiced, are necessary to make a fine piano, but they
are not sufficient. The other parts of the instrument are at least equally
important. The hammers merely provide the exciting force for the strings. A
bad piano equipped with even the best hammers will still be judged a bad
piano.

Where should the hammer hit the string

The hammer striking ratio (d/L) for the 1720 Cristofori piano and for two
representative modern pianos is shown in Fig. 11. Here L stands for the
speaking length of the string and d is the distance from the closest string
support (the agraffe) to the point where the hammer strikes. The values for
the 1720 piano seem to wander over a wide range to no apparent purpose.
Early makers did not fully appreciate the effect of varying d/L but by the late
18th century, piano makers began to know what values work best (Harding
1933). Many books about pianos state that the best place for the hammer to
strike the strings is between 1/7 and 1/9 of their speaking length. (Good 1982,
Marcuse 1975, Mc Ferrin 1972, Briggs 1951, White 1946, Wood 1944, Vant
1927, Ortman 1925, Wolfenden 1916, White 1906, Hansing 1888, Brinsmead
1879, Helmholtz 1863).

Fig. 11. Striking ratio (d/L) for two contemporary pianos and for 1720
Cristofori.

This is certainly not true for all the

notes of modern pianos. In the
best modern grand pianos the
smallest treble hammer (C8) is
always positioned at the factory
for each piano individually and is
set to produce the loudest tone.
This normally occurs for a d/Lvalue much smaller than 1/9,
usually in the range between 1/12 and 1/17. As you can see from the curves
labeled "contemporary" in Fig. 11, d/L in the bass is a little less than 1/8, and
it decreases gradually up to around A4 (note 49), and then decreases rapidly.
How d/L should vary across the compass depends on a number of factors and
is decided by the designer of the piano.
In the mid-treble, the best striking ratio often is a compromise between
maximum first partial energy and the most graceful tone. Reducing the
striking distance in this region generally makes the tone sound thinner
because less fundamental energy is present. Increasing the striking distance
makes the tone fatter, but may produce an unclear, muddy quality. Here,
hammer weight is also an important factor.
In the lower part of the scale, hammer contact time is small in comparison
with the roundtrip time for the pulse on the string - from the striking point to
the bridge and back again. Consequently, damping due to the hammers is
small. Moving the striking points of the hammers changes the tone quality
primarily by rearranging the relative amplitude of the partials. If the hammer
should strike the string at a nodal point, or near, where the string motion is
small, then the amplitude of the corresponding partial will also be small.
Fig. 12 shows how the measured output of one particular string varied as the
hammer striking ratio was changed. The graph shows partials 5 through 9.
The amplitude of each partial passes through a distinct minimum point as the
striking ratio is increased. If you were listening to the tone of the string you
would hear obvious differences in timbre as the hammer striking distance was
changed, and I am sure you would like the tone at certain d/L-values better
than at others.
Fig. 12 Output vs. striking ratio (d/L) for partials 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Fig. 13 shows the instantaneous

peak output spectrum for two
different values of the hammer
striking ratio. For d/L = 0.019
(1/53), the lower partials all have
very small amplitude. This is
because the hammer is striking
almost at the very end of the
string. For such a small d/L the
tone sounds thin and weak. For a longer striking distance, d/L = 0.143 (1/7),
the lower partials have gained in amplitude and the 7th partial is almost
completely missing. At one time it was believed that the 7th and 9th partials
were dissonant and ought to be eliminated by a proper choice of the striking
distance. Personally, I do not believe that any string partial should be
deliberately minimized.
Fig. 13. String spectra for short and long striking ratio (d/L = 0.019 and
0.143).

Soundboards
Fig. 14 shows the top of the soundboard of the 1720 Cristofori piano. The
original soundboard was made of cypress wood, 3.5 mm thick, which may
have come from Crete (Pollins 1984). The original soundboard was replaced in
1938 with what is said to be an accurate copy. The bottom of the soundboard
can be seen in Fig. 15. In contrast, Fig. 16 shows a contemporary concert
grand. Note that much of the contemporary soundboard is covered by the
cast iron string plate. The soundboards of modern pianos usually range in
thickness between 6.5 and 9.5 mm approximately. In the U.S.A., spruce, and
particularly Sitka spruce, has been the favored soundboard material for high
quality pianos.

Fig. 14 (left) Plan view of 1720 Cristofori (By permission of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art).
Fig. 15 (right) Bottom of 1720 Cristofori (By permission of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art).

Fig. 16.
Plan view
of
contemporary concert grand.

How does a soundboard vibrate?

Soundboards vibrate more readily at their modal or resonance frequencies
than at other frequencies. The photos in Figs. 17 - 20 show how a piano
soundboard vibrates at some of its modes (resonances).
The lowest frequency at which a soundboard can vibrate strongly is called the
first mode. In Fig. 17 we see an experiment in which a concert grand piano
soundboard has been vibrated at its first mode. The vibration generator, the
circular object that can be seen to the left in the photos, has been connected
mechanically to the soundboard at a point near its edge. For such a test the
procedure is the following: Before being vibrated the soundboard is covered
uniformly all over its surface with a mixture of fine particles (in this case sand
and "glitter"). Then the vibration generator is turned on and tuned slowly until
its frequency coincides approximately with that of a soundboard mode, as will
be indicated by a noticeable increase in sound level from the soundboard.
Then the generator level is increased until the acceleration of the particles

exceeds "1 g" (the acceleration of gravity, 9.8 m/s2) and the particles begin
to dance on the soundboard. As they dance, the particles gradually collect in
those areas that are not moving at all or are moving with minimum velocity.
This produces a pattern called a Chladni figure, so named after the famous
German physicist.
The first mode of this soundboard occurred at 49 Hz. In this mode, it is the
center of the soundboard that moves most violently; the edges, where you
see most of the particles, nearly stand still. A piano soundboard rapidly loses
its effectiveness as a sound radiator at frequencies below that of the first
mode, so notes below the first modal frequency usually do not have very
much energy in the first partial.
In Figs. 18, 19, and 20, you can see how the soundboard moves at some of its
other modes. Remember that the particles collect where the soundboard is
moving least.

Fig. 17. First (lowest) soundboard mode

at 49 Hz.

Fig. 18. Second mode at 67 Hz.

Fig. 19. Third mode at 89 Hz.

Fig. 20. Eighth mode at 184 Hz.

The modal frequencies are determined by many factors, the primary ones
being the material, size and shape of the soundboard, its thickness and grain
direction, and also the material, dimensions, and placement of its ribs.
Secondary factors include the characteristics of the rim or case to which the
soundboard is attached. In general, the thicker the soundboard, the louder
the piano but the less the duration of its tone. Soundboard design is often a
compromise.

Today there is a better way, called modal analysis, to study the vibration of
piano soundboards. Using this method, the soundboard is tapped with a
special hammer that is fitted with a force transducer. An accelerometer
attached to the soundboard responds to vibrations caused by the hammer
and the force and acceleration signals are stored digitally. The tapping is
repeated at a number of different preselected points on the soundboard, and
after all the data has been taken, a computer analyzes it and identifies the
modes (Suzuki 1986). With modern equipment it is possible to see an
animated display of the modal motion of the soundboard on a TV-screen, a
technique which will be described in more detail in the lecture by Klaus
Wogram.
Fig. 21 presents modal information in another way: it is a graph giving the
velocity of motion of the soundboard at one particular point (for a constant
driving force), as a function of frequency. This plotted quantity is called
mobility, and is the reciprocal of mechanical impedance. Each of the large
peaks you see in Fig. 21 corresponds to a particular soundboard mode like
those earlier shown in the Chladni patterns.
Fig. 21. Driving point velocity vs. frequency for concert grand soundboard
with no strings or plate (top), and with the piano
fully assembled and tuned (bottom).

The frequency and shape of soundboard modes

are affected by the strings and the cast-iron
plate. For the graph at the top in Fig. 21, the
plate and strings were removed from the piano.
The lower graph in the same Fig. shows the
mobility at the same point on the same
soundboard with the strings and plate in place
and the piano fully tuned. Notice how much the
picture has changed: the first mode has shifted
upward in frequency from 48 Hz to around 60 Hz,
and the modal peaks are broader than before
and not so high. In pianos of this size (concert
grand) you can often identify the first mode by
playing single notes up and down the scale. You may feel a slight increase in
the vibration level of the case, usually around C2 - D2 (keys 16 - 18), and you
may hear an increase in the sound level of the first partial.
In order to do the analyses just mentioned we have to test an actual
soundboard. So we need first to build a piano before we can measure it. But
now, by still another new technique called finite element analysis (FEA), we
can construct a model of the proposed soundboard with computer software.
Then, using a computer, we can find out how the soundboard will move
before we build the piano!

The varnish
The varnish on a piano soundboard does not have a significant effect on the
tone, as far as I have been able to discover. However, the varnish has a very
significant effect on the tuning stability of pianos. Without varnish on its
soundboard a piano can go rather quickly out of tune if the humidity should
change. This is because the size and weight of any piece of wood depends on
the relative humidity and temperature of the air around it. Wood absorbs
moisture until the amount in the wood is in equilibrium with the surrounding
environment.
Fig. 22. Equilibrium moisture content of wood vs.
relative humidity at 24o C.

Fig. 22 shows how much moisture will be in a piece

of wood at equilibrium for different values of
relative humidity at a temperature of 24o C (75o F)
(see Wood Handbook 1987). The amount will be
about the same for all species of wood. As you can
see, at 50% relative humidity about 9% of the
weight of the wood will be moisture. The varnish
on a soundboard slows down the rate at which moisture can enter and leave
the soundboard, and so lets the piano stay in tune longer. I once gave a copy
of this graph to a friend who had just bought a new grand piano. A couple of
days later he telephoned, sounding somewhat upset: it seems he had
calculated that his new $30,000 piano contained 7.2 gallons (27 litres) of
water and that each gallon had cost $229!

New materials
Why can't we use a material for soundboards that is not affected by humidity?
Some early research on soundboard materials other than wood apparently
was done here in Sweden by a man named Fridolf Frankel. Fig. 23 shows the
cover of a booklet, written in English and dated 1923, describing a
soundboard that is said to have been made of steel, 0.65 mm thick. I found
the booklet in some old files of an American piano company. Despite the
favoured testimonials for the performance of his pianos (Fig. 24), few
instruments seem to have survived.
Many years later, in 1961, the American harpsichord builder, John Challis,
constructed a piano having a metal soundboard and bridge (Challis 1963).
Such an instrument was demonstrated by the pianist Arthur Loesser at a
concert in New York City in 1967 (Henahan 1967). An excerpt from a
recording of this concert can be heard in sound example 3. Apparently, the
Challis piano was not suitable for playing a wide range of standard piano

literature, for even at this concert it was used by the performer only for a few
18th century pieces.

Fig. 23. Cover of Frankel booklet

describing steel soundboard
(1923).

Fig. 24. Testimonials for Frankel's pianos.

In 1969, a U.S. patent was issued to P.A. Bert describing a soundboard for
pianos employing sandwich construction with a cellular core and plastic
facings. I have been told that at least one such instrument was built, but so
far as I know, they were not marketed. I personally believe strongly that
researchers today have available better materials for piano soundboards than
ever before, and that only diligent applied research is needed in order to
produce the next significant improvement in the piano.
When we try to "improve" the piano we must remember that we dare not
change its essential character. If we do, it is almost certain to be rejected.
Pianists who have spent years in learning to deal artfully with existing
instruments quite naturally do not want to have to relearn their skills. They
are incredibly sensitive to changes! I was present at one occasion on which an
instrument of rather exotic construction was being tested. It looked like an
ordinary piano and its sound was extremely pleasant, though slightly unusual.
An excellent pianist was called in to give an opinion. He played at some
length. To us in the audience the instrument sounded quite beautiful. Finally
our pianist said it had a "nice sunny sound" and would be very good for
Spanish piano music. After this encouraging initial response some minor
changes were made and a rather more famous pianist was called in. This
pianist reported that the instrument was good only for French piano music!
Still further changes were made but this particular instrument never moved
across the border and into Germany, musically speaking.

The piano case

As you can see from Figs. 25 and 26, a modern grand case is very
substantially made. The rims of the best modern grand pianos are usually
made from heavy hardwoods such as maple or beech, and may have a total
thickness between 80 - 90 mm. The case for a piano of this size may weigh
150 - 200 kg. The acoustical benefit of this is that it provides a massive
termination for the edges of the soundboard. This means that the vibrational
energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating
uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound.

Fig. 25. Grand rim with keybed attached.

Fig. 26.
Grand
rim
nearly

completed.

Cristofori had a totally opposite idea about the soundboard as the sketch in
Fig. 27 shows (Pollins 1984). His soundboard, 3.5 mm thick, was glued to an
extra inner vertical case wall, only about 4 mm thick. This was mechanically
decoupled from the main outer walls of the case. Cristofori must have felt
that connecting the soundboard directly to the outer case would impede its
vibration. Fig. 28 is a view of the underside of the 1720 piano with its bottom
board removed. The large cross members are not ribs but rather stiffening
members that are connected to the sides of the outer case.

Fig. 27. Cross section of Cristofori case. (By permission of the Journal of the
American Musical Instrument
Society).

Fig. 28. Close-up of

underside of 1720 Cristofori
piano. (By permission of the
Journal of the American
Musical Instrument Society).

The cast-iron plate

Piano makers gradually
learned that pianos could be
made louder by increasing
the weight and tension of the
strings with the result that
wooden frames soon became
inadequate to support the
increased stresses. Until
around the beginning of the
19th century the loadbearing structure of pianos was made entirely of wood. By the end of that
same century almost all pianos had cast-iron string plates. The metal plate
(Fig. 29) brought improved tuning stability and, at least to most modern ears,
better tone.

Fig. 29. View of

contemporary concert grand
plate.

The need for a stronger

supporting structure for the
strings is clearly indicated by
Fig. 30, which shows the
pulling force per string
(tension) and the total string
pull, calculated for the 1720 Cristofori and for a contemporary concert grand.
The average pull of the strings of the Cristofori is only about 70 N (16 lbf,
"pound force"), versus about 830 N (190 lbf) for the contemporary piano. The
total string load is roughly 7500 N (1700 lbf) for the Cristofori, compared with
about 210 000 N (47 000 lbf) for the modern concert grand.

Fig. 30. String pull for 9-ft (274 cm) contemporary grand and for 1720
Cristofori.

The plate must be strong

enough not to break under
the load of the strings, and it
should also be stiff enough to
provide good tuning stability.
Beyond this, the design of
the plate affects the tone of
the instrument in many less
obvious ways, of which only their general direction will be indicated.
In any stringed instrument the speaking length of each string has two ends. In
a piano, one end is connected, via the bridge, to the soundboard, which is
expected to radiate sound efficiently. The other end is always connected in
some way to the frame of the instrument, which is invariably an inefficient
radiator of sound. In modern pianos the forward string termination (the
agraffe) is located on the iron string plate, as shown in Fig. 31 This part of the
plate should be designed so as not to steal energy away from the strings and
the soundboard. The plate should not vibrate appreciably at string
frequencies as the piano is being played. Generally, this requires that the
plate be rather massive. Plates of concert grand size may weigh 160 - 180 kg.

Fig. 31. Close-up of forward

termination (agraffe panel) of
modern grand.

Strings
The fundamental frequency of a stretched string is given by the expression
below, known since the beginning of the 17th century, in which L is the length
of the string, T is its tension or pull, and M is its mass per unit length.

f 0=

1
2L

T
M

The fundamental frequencies of a modern piano are known in advance

because A4 has a standard frequency (440 Hz) and because the frequencies
of adjacent notes all across the equally tempered scale have a ratio equal to
the twelfth root of 2, about 1.05946. The most common calculation in
designing a piano scale is the tension, not the frequency of the string. (The
scale is the distribution of the string lengths and gauges over the compass of
the instrument). The above expression can easily be rearranged to give the
tension. Also, a factor (F) can be added to the formula above to allow for the
use of wrapped strings, and a changeable constant (k) may be employed in
order to permit calculation for any string material in any system of units.
Then the tension of a string may be written as:

f 20 L2 d 2C F
T=
k
In this formula, dc is the string diameter (or the core wire diameter, in the
case of a wrapped string). F is unity (1) for a plain string but has some larger
positive value for a wrapped string. For a string of steel music wire for which
the length and diameter are given in centimeters, the tension will be given in
Newtons (N) for k = 4096. I show this formula to make a certain point: there's
a lot of multiplying here! In the old days it could take a long time to calculate
just one string. What if you had to do this for 88 different strings with only
pencil and paper?
Much in early piano design obviously was empirical. Empiricism seems to
have persisted for longer than one might expect. Would you believe that even
in the 20th century, piano designers still didn't know how to calculate the
tension of a wrapped string, and had to find it by actual measurement.
(Wrapping the core of a string helically with turns of another wire is a very old
method, still in use, to make a bass string heavy without having its core too
thick and thereby too stiff to produce a good tone.) The following sentence
appears in a supplement, dated 1927, to Wolfenden's well-known book about
piano design:
"It is remarkable that, at this date, after spun strings have been in use for,
say, a matter of two centuries, neither in this country nor any other, as far as
many enquiries have shown, is there in trade use, a method by which the
tensional stress upon a spun string, tuned to a given pitch, can be
approximately ascertained" (Wolfenden 1927).
Equations for calculating the pull of wrapped piano strings are now well
known to at least some piano manufacturers and also to many piano
technicians. Also, with computers we can calculate piano strings and scales
very accurately and much more quickly than ever before.

Longitudinal string modes

Of course there is more to designing good piano scales than merely
calculating the tension of the strings. In 1967, I applied for a patent under the
heading, "Longitudinal Mode Tuning of Stringed Instruments" (Conklin 1970). I
found the technique outlined in this patent to be such a powerful tool in scale
design work, especially in the design of wrapped strings, that today I would
not consider designing a piano without it.
In longitudinal modes of vibration, energy propagates lengthwise along the
string (as periodic compressions of the string material) without sidewise
(transverse) motion of the string. Longitudinal and transverse vibrations of a
piano string can occur simultaneously. However, the lowest-frequency
longitudinal mode of a piano string is always more than ten times the
frequency of the lowest-frequency transverse mode.
It has long been known that the strings of pianos and other musical
instruments can have longitudinal modes of vibration (Rayleigh 1877,
Knoblaugh 1944, Leipp 1969). My patent simply teaches what the designer
should do about it in order to make the best sounding instrument. I learned
the importance of the longitudinal mode by accident; one day, while I was
installing a new string, I noticed that the string sounded better when it was
tuned to the wrong frequency! After some study it became apparent that the
reason had to do with the longitudinal mode. The first longitudinal mode of a
piano string normally occurs at a frequency somewhere in the range between
3 octaves plus a fifth and 4 octaves plus a third above the "normal"
fundamental transverse frequency of a string. This range is determined by
certain design constraints related to the properties of piano wire that are
common to all present-day pianos.
A piano tuner tunes the transverse, or flexural, modes of the strings by
changing the tension of the strings as he turns the tuning pins. A piano tuner
can do nothing to affect the frequency of the longitudinal mode because
turning the tuning pins doesn't change it. The longitudinal frequency of a
plain steel string in a piano can be changed only by altering its speaking
length. In the case of wrapped piano strings, the longitudinal mode can be
tuned only in two ways: either by changing the speaking length or by
changing the weight of the wrapping wire in relation to the weight of the core
wire. So, the tuning of the longitudinal mode is established, either
deliberately or accidentally, by the designer of the piano; and, as a practical
matter, it cannot be changed after the piano has been built.
In designing a piano nowadays, it is possible to tune the longitudinal modes of
its strings to those frequencies that will make the piano sound best. In sound
example 4, you can hear what kinds of changes in the timbre of piano tones
are produced by changing the tuning of the longitudinal mode.

I think you will agree that each string sounds different from the others.
However, all those six strings were tuned to the same transverse frequency
by a piano tuner: all the notes were low G1 (key 11) on the piano! They
sounded different because each had a different tuning of the longitudinal
mode. In sound example 5, you can hear a little tune which is known as
"Yankee Doodle". The tune is played in two different keys.
I am sure you will recognize that a tune is being played. However, the tune
was played on strings that were all tuned to the same transverse frequency!
The tunes could be heard because each string was designed so that its
longitudinal mode differed in frequency by a semi-tone (100 cents) from that
of the preceding string. (The common transverse frequency was not the same
for the two versions in different keys.)
Next, listen to some chords, each chord followed by a bass note having a
different tuning of the longitudinal mode but the same tuning of the
transverse mode (sound example 6).
As I hope you can hear, the longitudinal mode is important in determining the
tone color of the bass and tenor regions of the piano. The longitudinal mode
creates a formant-like emphasis in the tone at its own frequency, with the
result that some tunings of the longitudinal mode sound much better than
others. In particular, it is desirable to have the longitudinal mode tuned so
that it blends harmoniously with the tone from the transverse modes. This
can be achieved by careful and deliberate choices in the design of the strings
and scale of the instrument.
In the examples you have heard so far the longitudinal mode was deliberately
tuned at intervals of a certain number of semi-tones with reference to the
fundamental transverse mode. Strange and undesirable things can happen to
the tone if the longitudinal mode is ignored or left to chance by the designer.
Next you will hear some scales played on two different pianos. The first piano
has the longitudinal mode tuned by design, the second one does not. As you
can hear, the piano having deliberately tuned longitudinal modes has a much
more uniform and pleasing voice through the scale (sound example 7).
Physicists may want to know if it is possible to measure what we are hearing.
Fig. 32 is an acoustical spectrogram of piano note E1, with a fundamental
frequency of about 41 Hz. The "normal" transverse partials are identified by
small dots near each peak. The longitudinal mode can be seen between the
14th and 15th partials and is about 20 decibels lower in level than the
neighboring partials (Podlesack & Lee 1988).

Fig. 32. Spectrum of piano note E1 (41 Hz) showing longitudinal mode
(indicated by the vertical line at about 600 Hz).

Machines similar to those shown in

Fig. 33 have been used for a long
time to wind the copper covering
wire onto wrapped piano strings.
With these machines the
characteristics of the finished
strings are strongly dependent
upon the technique of the operator.
Operator technique varies, not only
from person to person, but also
from string to string. It was found to be impossible with such machines to
control the tuning of the longitudinal mode precisely enough so that
successive strings could be accurately tuned and alike in tone. For this
reason, it was necessary to design a new type of machine, also patented, with
which the characteristics of the finished string would be independent of the
operator. With this machine, optimum settings are predetermined for each
type of string.

Fig. 33. Old string

machines.

The tuning pins

One thing about
pianos has hardly
changed at all in the
268 years since the
1720 Cristofori was
built: the tuning pins! They are still small metal cylinders that are driven into
holes bored in a slab of wood. As all piano technicians know, tuning pins can
have various problems that interfere with accurate tuning of the instrument. I
am very pleased to announce - and this is the first public announcement that I have devised a new type of tuning pin that seems to eliminate problems
encountered with conventional tuning pins. My tests indicate that the new pin
will make tuning easier, faster, and more accurate. Because of patent
considerations, I cannot yet describe it to you but before long I hope to be
able to convince piano manufacturers to use it!

References

Benade, A.H. (1976): Fundamentals of Music Acoustics (Oxford University Press,

London) pp. 339-343.

Boutillon, X. (1988): "Model for piano hammers: Experimental determination and

digital simulation," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 746-754.

Briggs, G.A. (1951): Pianos, Pianists and Sonics (Wharfdale Wireless Works,
Bradford Rd., Bradford, Yorks) p. 37.

Brinsmead, Edgar (1879): The History of the Pianoforte (reissued by Singing Tree
Press, Detroit, orig. pub. by Novello, Ewer and Co., London, 1879) p. 47.

Challis, John (1963): "New: A 20th Century Piano," American Music Teacher, JulAug 1963, p. 20.

Conklin, Harold A. Jr. (1970): U.S. Pat. 3,523,480, "Longitudinal Mode Tuning of
Stringed Instruments," Aug. 11, 1970.

Good, Edwin M. (1982): Giraffes, Black Dragons, and other Pianos (Stanford
University Press) p. 9.

Hall, D.E. (1986): "Piano string excitation in the case of small hammer mass," J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, pp. 141-147.

Hall, D.E. (1987a): "Piano string excitation II: General solution for a hard narrow
hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 535-546.

Hall, D.E. (1987b): "Piano string excitation III: General solution for a soft narrow
hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 547-555.

Hall, D.E. & Clark, P.J. (1987): "Piano string excitation IV: The question of missing
modes," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, pp. 1913-1918.

Hall, D.E. and Askenfelt, A. (1988): "Piano string excitation V: Spectra for real
hammers and strings," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 1627-1637.

Hansing, Siegfried (1888): Das Pianoforte in seinen akustischen Anlagen (New

York), p. 92.

Harding, Rosamond E.M. (1933): The Piano-forte - Its History Traced to the Great
Exhibition of 1851 (Da Capo Press, New York 1973, reprint of 1933 edition), pp.
64-66.

Helmholtz, Hermann L.F. (1863): On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological

Basis for the Theory of Music (Dover Publications Inc., New York 1954, first ed.
Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1863) p. 77.

Henahan, Donal (1967): "Loesser, Pianist, Exhumes 'Ghosts' to Mark Halloween,"

(a review of the concert), New York Times, Oct. 3, 1967.

Knoblaugh, Armond F. (1944): "The clang tone of the pianoforte," J. Acoust. Soc.
Am., 19, p. 102.

Leipp, Emile (1969): The Violin (University of Toronto Press), pp. 97-99.

Marcuse, Sibyl (1975): Musical Instruments, A Comprehensive Dictionary (W.W.

Norton & Co., New York), p. 405.

McFerrin, W.V. (1972): The Piano - Its Acoustics (Tuners Supply Co., Boston), p. 84.

Ortman, Otto (1925): The Physical Basis of Piano Touch and Tone (E.P. Dutton &
Co., New York), p. 96.

Podlesak, M. & Lee, A.R. (1988): "Dispersion of waves in piano strings," J. Acoust.
Soc. Am. 83, pp. 305-317.

Pollins, Stewart (1984): "The Pianos of Bartolomeo Cristofori," J. Amer. Musical

Instrument Soc. 10, pp. 32-68.

Rayleigh Lord (Strutt, John William, 1877): The Theory of Sound (MacMillan & Co.,
Ltd., London, reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., New York) Vol. I, p. 252 (a
quotation referring to longitudinal mode of piano and violin strings taken from p.
154 of Donkin's Acoustics).

Suzuki, H. (1986): "Vibration and sound radiation of a piano soundboard," J.

Acoust. Soc. Am. 80, pp. 1573-1588.

Vant, Albert (1927): Piano Scale Making (pub. by Albert V. Vant, 543 Academy St.,
New York), p. 30.

White, William Braid (1906): Theory and Practice of Pianoforte Building (Edward
Lyman Bill, New York, reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., New York 1975) p. 34.

White, William Braid (1946): Piano Tuning and Allied Arts (Tuners Supply Co.,
Boston) 5th ed., p. 45.

Wood, Alexander (1944): The Physics of Music (Metheun & Co., Ltd., London) p.
94.

Wolfenden, Samuel (1916): A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction

(original ed. 1916, reprinted by Unwin Bros., Ltd, Old Working, Surrey, U.K., 1975),
pp. 50-51.

Wolfenden, Samuel (1927): Supplement to A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte

Construction (orig. ed. 1927, reprinted by Unwin Bros., Ltd., Old Working, Surrey,
U.K., 1975), p. 208.

Wood Handbook (1987): Wood as an Engineering Material (Forest Products

Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C.), Chap. 3,
pp. 9-11.

From touch to string vibration

Anders Askenfelt & Erik Jansson

Introduction
This lecture will present a series of experiments exploring the initial stages of
the sound production in the piano - beginning with the motion of the key and
ending with the string vibrations. This chain of events is closely connected
with the performance of the pianist, who, by depressing the key, sets the
parts of the action in motion, which eventually causes the hammer to strike
the strings.
In contrast to performers on other string instruments, like the violinist or the
guitar player, the pianist could be said to only have an indirect control of the
string excitation. Using the computer biased terminology of today, it is
tempting to call the action an "interface" between the pianist and the string.
This interface is an interconnecting device, which at the input end (the keys)
is particularly adapted to the soft and sensitive fingers of the pianist, while
the output end is equipped with hard felt hammers, capable of exciting even
the thickest of the tense piano strings vigorously. The function of this
"interface" in playing is by no means simple.
We will illustrate some important properties of the action by presenting
measurements of the timing in the action under different conditions, and also
show how the motions of the key and hammer change, depending on how the
key is depressed. Furthermore, the resulting string vibrations will be closely
examined and the manufacturer's, the piano technician's and the pianist's
influence on the spectrum of the piano tone will be compared.
During the presentation it will successively become clear that the successful
piano performer is accompanied by two mostly anonymous artists, the piano
technician and the tuner, sometimes but far from always combined in one
and the same person. In contrast to a widespread belief, the fact is that it is
not sufficient to have the piano tuned prior to the performance (in such a way
that it stays in tune during the entire concert); the piano must also be
properly regulated in order to play well.
Despite the remote control of the actual string excitation by the hammer
impact, pianists pay great attention to the way the key is depressed. Often
the term "touch" is used to denote this process. Physicists and piano players
have had contrasting views regarding the importance of this point for a long
period of time, and later on we will try to add some material regarding this
question. However, we must hasten to add that at the moment we will not be
able to resolve this conflict, but perhaps we can indicate in which directions
the answers can be sought.

Timing in the action

First of all, let us present a rather detailed description of the function of the
grand piano action. The actions of all grand pianos of today are in principle
identical, and the small differences which do remain are limited to the design
of the individual parts.

Fig. 1. View of the action of a modern grand piano (Steinway & Sons). The
shaded areas indicate felt and the broad lines indicate leather.
Principally, the action consists of four major parts: the key, the lever body
with appurtenant parts, the hammer and the damper (see Fig. 1). The
successive steps in the operation of the action during a blow is illustrated in
Fig. 2.

2(a) Rest position. The hammer rests via the hammer roller on the springsupported repetition lever, a part of the lever body. The lever body stands on
the key, supported by the capstan screw. The weight of the hammer and the
lever body holds the playing end of the key in its upper position. The damper
rests on the string, pulled down by lead weights.

2(b) Acceleration.
When the pianist
depresses the key, the
lever body is rotated
upwards. The jack,
mounted on the lever
body, pushes the roller
and accelerates the
hammer. The damper is
lifted off the string by
the inner end of the
key.

2(c) Let-off. The tail

end of the jack is
stopped by the
escapement dolly, and
the top of the jack is
rotated away from the
hammer roller. The
hammer, which now is
free, continues towards
the string. The
repetition lever is stopped in waiting position by the drop screw.

2(d) Check. The

rebounding hammer
falls with the hammer
roller on the repetition
lever, in front of the
tripped jack, before it
is captured at the tail
of the hammer head
by the check. The
stroke may now be
repeated, either by
releasing the key as usual, or by using the double-repetition feature (see
text).

The action of the grand piano features a special construction for fast
repetitions, the double-repetition mechanism, not incorporated in the action
of the upright piano. In order to use the double-repetition feature, the key is
let up only about a third of its travel after a stroke. At this stage, the hammer
has been released from the check and lifted slightly by the spring-supported
repetition lever (cf. Fig. 2 d). This allows the spring-loaded jack to slip back
into its initial position under the roller, and the action is set for a second blow.
The double-repetition mechanism enables very fast repetitions on the same
key, without the damper touching the string between notes.
A correct function of the action requires a careful regulation. Of crucial
importance is the distance between the top of the hammer at rest and the
string, in the following hammer-string distance (piano technicians term: "blow
level"). This distance is adjusted with the capstan screw (typical value 45 - 47
mm). Of equal importance is the setting of the release of the jack ("let-off").
This is adjusted with the escapement dolly. The adjustment is made by
observing the distance between the string and the top of the hammer at the
highest point of its travel (let-off distance), when the key is depressed slowly.
The let-off distance is typically set between 1 and 3 mm, the actual value
depending on such factors as the diameter of the string, interval between
regulations, and sometimes, the personal taste of the pianist.
In all contact points between moving parts, one of the surfaces is covered
with felt or leather in order to ensure a smooth and silent motion, free from
backlash. In particular, thin shafts with close tolerances, for example the shaft
for the hammer shank in the flange, are mounted in bushings of high-quality
felt. The combination of wood and felt parts means that the action will change
condition not only because of wear, but also due to changes in temperature
and humidity. Periodic regulation is thus necessary in order to keep the
instrument in optimum condition.

Measuring the timing

We measured the timing in the action electrically by a network of "microswitches," integrated with the action. These switches consisted of copper foils
and thin copper wires glued and sewn to the contact surfaces. During a blow,
the different switches turned off and on as the parts moved, and a stepwise
signal was generated at the output of the network.
In order to obtain blows which could be repeated with a high degree of
reproducibility in the timing experiments, we also had to develop "a
mechanical pianist." It turned out that for this particular purpose a long
pendulum was ideal as a substitute for the player.

Fig. 3. Overview timing diagram of the grand action for a "staccato-touch,"

forte, C4. The string vibrations are included for reference. Note the time scale
(20 ms/div), and the comparison with the duration of the sixteenth-note in
andante (M.M. = 107 beats/min).
A typical example of a timing diagram for a "staccato-note" - a short note
played with the finger striking the key from some distance above the key - is
shown in Fig. 3. First of all, it can be noted that the processes which take
place in the action are very fast. While the duration of the rather short note in
this example is about a 1/10th of a second (100 ms), the contact between the
hammer and string lasts only a few thousandths of a second (1/1000 s = 1
millisecond = 1 ms). The contact with the string is preceded by a long history,
during which different parts are engaged in turn, but it is only during these
few milliseconds energy is transferred into the string.
Listing the most important steps chronologically, starting with the player's
finger on the key, we see that the damper is lifted off the string plenty of time
(15 ms) before the hammer strikes the string. Much later, only a few
milliseconds before hammer-string contact, the tail end of the jack reaches
the escapement dolly, and the top of the jack starts to withdraw from the
hammer roller. Just before (less than 1 ms) the impact on the string, the jack
loses contact with the roller, and the hammer swings freely during the final
part of its travel. At about the same moment the key happens to reach its
bottom position.
The height of this chain of events, the hammer-string contact, occupies only
about 2 ms. Almost immediately after the hammer-string contact has ceased,
the hammer returns, first making contact with the repetition lever before it is
checked. If the key were held down after the stroke, the action would remain
in this state while the note decayed undisturbed. In this example, however,
the key is immediately released ("staccato"), and the parts of the action
revert to their initial positions. The note is terminated when the damper falls

down on the string approximately 80 ms after hammer-string contact and

brings the string to rest after some bouncing.

Key bottom and hammerstring contact

A close-up of the events at string contact at three dynamic levels shows two
interesting facts (see Fig. 4). One observation is of special interest for the
pianist. It turns out that at a certain dynamic level, about mezzo forte, the key
reaches its bottom position at the same moment as the hammer strikes the
string, while at other dynamic levels this synchrony is dissolved. For those of
us who don't play the instrument, this observation may not seem very
interesting, but every piano player can tell that the bottom feeling of the key
is an important feedback from instrument.

Fig. 4. Influence of dynamic level (p - mf - f) on the timing in the action. The

dashed line shows how the moment of key bottom contact is advanced
relative to the moment of hammer-string contact, as the dynamic level is
raised. The dotted line indicates the shortening of hammer-string contact
duration with rising
level.

The relation between

the moments of key
bottom contact and
hammer-string contact
shows a smooth
progression with
dynamic level (see Fig.
5). At a soft level
(piano) the bottom
contact is delayed
compared to the
hammer-string contact, and at louder levels, the contact is advanced - at forte
it occurs even before the hammer strikes the string(s). Interestingly, the
magnitude of this shift in timing with level was about the same for an
untrained subject as for a professional pianist. This indicates that the
phenomenon probably is a combination of the inherent properties of the
action and general differences between the ways the key is depressed in forte
and piano, respectively ("stroke" vs. "press").

Fig. 5. Influence of dynamic level on the timing relation between key bottom
contact and hammer-string contact. An untrained subject (unfilled symbols)
and a professional pianist (filled symbols) are seen to perform almost
identically. The dots indicate notes played with very unusual types of touch.
The dynamic span
ranges from pp to ff,
corresponding to 33
dB.

One may wonder if the

pianist is aware of this
variable "delay"
between the onset of
the note (the hammer
strikes the string) and
the response in the
finger (the key reaches
its bottom position).
Probably not, even
though the delay can reach an order of magnitude (about 20 ms) that it likely
affects playing at an artistic level. Presumably, the "bottom feeling" and a
compensation for the delay are unconsciously developed during the years of
study.
If the piano is not properly regulated, this timing property will be upset. Here,
the relevant parameter is the hammer-string distance. A longer hammerstring distance than the nominal value - a normal result of wear - will advance
the key bottom contact. An increase in hammer-string distance from a normal
47 mm to 50 mm will result in a shift in the delay comparable to a change in
level from mezzo forte to piano (cf. Fig. 5). Most probably a pianist will feel
uncomfortable when facing a piano with such an "out-of-tune" regulation,
especially if she is accustomed to proper conditions. And, even worse, if the
regulation and hence the corresponding delays happens to vary between
keys, the artist's performance is likely to be disturbed.
While we are discussing the piano technician's regulation we must also
shortly mention the influence of changing the let-off distance. This
adjustment determines mainly how long the free flight of the hammer before
string contact will last. A very short setting of the let-off (< 1 mm in the
midrange and treble) gives the pianist close control of the hammer motion
almost up to string level, and there is only a very short interval (< 1 ms)
between the moment when the hammer leaves the jack and the moment
when it hits the string. Such a close setting is preferred by pianists as it
enables a delicate pianissimo-playing under strict control, and it is also

claimed to facilitate a powerful fortissimo. Unfortunately, the instrument

cannot be left without inspection for any longer period of time in this
condition, so the average piano player (and owner) will have to resort to a
somewhat more moderate regulation.

String contact duration and dynamic level

A second interesting observation that can made from Fig. 4 is that the
duration of the hammer-string contact decreases as the dynamic level is
raised. This is due to a peculiar property of the piano hammer, called
nonlinear stiffness. In effect, this nonlinearity makes the hammer harder, the
higher the impact velocity. The details of this effect which is of extreme
importance for a proper tone generation, is explained in the lecture by Donald
Hall.
At the moment it may suffice to know that the duration of the hammer-string
contact time is one of the major parameters in determining the spectral
content. It can be shown that a shorter contact duration increases the amount
of high frequency partials in the spectrum. The graph in Fig. 6 illustrates how
the contact duration decreases with rising level for a note in the midrange,
indicating a boost of the high-frequency partials when the dynamic level
grows from piano to forte. The variation in contact duration within a
comfortably accessible dynamic range (p - ff) is about +/- 20 % compared to
mezzo forte. Later in this presentation we will return to measurements of the
spectral changes which follow from changes in dynamic level.

Fig. 6. Illustration of the how

string contact duration
decreases with rising dynamic
level (C4). A touch by a
pendulum (mf) is represented
by an unfilled square. The
dashed lines represent the
range in contact duration
covered in a comfortably
accessible dynamic span from
p to ff.

Given a fixed dynamic level, the contact duration is determined by such

design factors as the ratio between the mass of the hammer and the string(s)
and the striking point along the string. As these parameters vary over the

compass of the piano, the contact durations will change slowly from bass to
treble. In Fig. 7, the contact durations are sampled by one note per octave,
and as we can see the contact durations decrease from about 4 ms in the
bass to less than 1 ms in the highest treble. Not surprisingly, the treble could
thus be assumed to contain spectral components with higher frequencies
than the bass.
Fig. 7. Hammer-string contact durations expressed in milliseconds, illustrating
how the contact durations decrease from bass to treble. The bars indicate the
range in contact duration between a blow in ff (left end) and pp (right end).
The vertical line in each bar represents a blow by a pendulum at mezzo forte.
The solid curve marked To/2 represents
half a period of the fundamental.

Fig. 8. The same hammer-string contact

durations as in Fig. 7, but now expressed
in percent of half a period of the
fundamental (To/2). Note that in this
relative measure, the durations are short
in the bass and long in the treble.

An entirely different picture

develops if the contact durations
are
related to the period time of the
fundamental (the inverse of the
fundamental frequency) of the
corresponding note (see Fig. 8).
Now it
can be seen that the contact
durations are short in the bass in comparison with the fundamental period,
while the opposite situation prevails in the treble.
A general theorem in string physics helps us to interpret these differences.
The theorem tells us that string resonances with period times essentially
shorter than the contact duration will be only weakly excited by the blow. The
implication of this theorem for the sound quality of the piano is that the bass
notes will be rich in partials compared to the treble notes. This is so, because
in the bass the contact duration is only about 10 % of the fundamental
period; it is not until the 10th partial that we reach a period time that is short
in comparison with the contact duration. In the treble on the other hand, even
the fundamental period is much too short to be optimally excited, and the
situation for the higher partials becomes successively worse.

An alternative design of the piano could be imagined, such that the string
contact durations were a constant fraction of the fundamental period over the
entire compass. This would demand a rescaling of the striking points, much
heavier bass hammers than "normal," and also lighter treble hammers.
However, the sound would probably be rated as second to the present design,
being too muddy in the bass and too brilliant in the treble.
In this case the customers are likely to have good acoustical reasons to reject
the new design. But even in the case of smaller changes which would be
welcomed by the manufacturer, the customers are notoriously hard to
convince about the benefit of news. Tradition bears a strong power on music
and musical instruments. Imagine a traditional piano concerto being played
on anything but a black grand piano!

The motions of the key and the hammer

Leaving the timing aspect of the processes in the action, we now turn to the
actual motions of the key and hammer. These motions were measured by
means of an inexpensive optical system, developed with an ordinary reflex
camera as a central part. A position sensitive photodetector which replaced
the film in the camera registered the positions of small light sources on the
key and hammer.

Key motion
The motion of the key turned out to be very different for different types of
touch. In a touch with the finger striking the key from some distance above
("staccato"), the key normally made a temporary "stop" during its descent
(see Fig. 9, left). This is seen as a plateau in the key position curve at about a
third of the key travel, and more clearly in the key velocity curve which
oscillates up-and-down due to the temporary retardation. This strange motion
of the key was found to be connected with a resonance in the hammer. The
reason is that during a "staccato-touch" a strong, initial impulse is delivered
to the base of the hammer shank via the jack and roller. This impulse sets the
hammer in vibration, the relatively heavy hammer head oscillating up-anddown on the flexible hammer shank. The bending motion of the hammer
shank is partly transferred back via the action to key, where it can be
measured and probably also perceived by the pianist as some kind of
"response" from the instrument.
In a touch with the finger initially resting on the key ("legato"), the motion
always followed a smooth path. A typical example is shown in Fig. 9 (right).
The key velocities are generally rather low. At mezzo forte (cf. Fig. 9), the
maximum velocities are approximately 0.3 - 0.5 m/s. Even in forte the peak
velocity does seldom exceed 1 m/s (about 4 km/h).

Fig. 9. Influence of different types of

touch on the key motion (mezzo forte,
C4). The two cases represent a
staccato-touch with the finger starting
its motion from some distance above
the key (left), and a legato-touch with
the finger initially resting on the key
(right).

Hammer motion
The hammer must travel a distance which is approximately five times longer
than the travel of the key in essentially the same time. Consequently, the
hammer velocities are about five times higher than the key velocities. Two
typical examples are given in Fig. 10 which shows a mezzo forte and forte
touch, respectively. In the forte example, the maximum hammer velocity is
about 5 m/s (18 km/h), not very far from the highest velocity observed during
the experiments. Observe the short moment of hammer-string contact
indicated in the figure, and also that the hammer is checked at a lower level
in forte because of the higher return velocity when rebounding from the
string.

Fig. 10. Typical registrations of hammer position and velocity at mezzo forte
and forte (C4). The horizontal line indicates the level of the string. Note the
short moment of hammer-string contact
and the differences in check level.

Depending on the touch, the motion of

the hammer can be quite different, even
when the dynamic level is kept constant. The examples in Fig. 11 show the
hammer velocity and acceleration for three different types of touch as
measured at the hammer head. Indeed, the motion of the hammer before
string contact is different in the three examples, despite the fact that the final
velocities were approximately the same. At the moment it may suffice to note
that the hammer motion seems to involve two components of oscillation,
which are excited differently depending on the touch. One is a slow
"backwash" motion at about 50 Hz and the other is a "ripple" type motion at
about 400 Hz. While the slow motion is more prominent in the gentle types of
touch, the "ripple" motion seems to be a characteristic of the vigorous,
impulse-like types of touch.

The perceptual differences between these notes were only rated informally.
The pianist described the differences in tone character as large, but the
experimenters on the other hand, had the impression that the differences
were rather subtle. A formal evaluation would need a reliable listening test
according to one of the recognized (and elaborate) methods prescribed by
music psychologists, including a close control of the dynamic level.

Fig. 11. Influence of different types of touch on the

hammer motion (acceleration and velocity) mezzo
forte, B3. The pianist described the types as:
"middle finger only" (top), "heavy arm with relaxed
finger" (middle), "heavy arm with strained finger"
(bottom).

Hammer resonances
In order to verify that the observed hammer
vibrations were not an isolated characteristic of the
particular piano used in the experiment, we also
investigated hammers from an other instrument.
Indeed, the same types of resonances were
observed, and in fact, the "ripple" mode was more
developed in the piano rated as superior of the two
instruments (see Fig. 12). The vibrations were
observed both before and after string contact, naturally more vividly so after
the violent collision.

Fig. 12. Comparison of the motions

(accelerations) of the hammer head for
two grand pianos, showing two
components of vibration; one slow
("backwash"), and a faster ("ripple").
Note that the "ripple" does not develop
for a hammer with a slightly loose
hammer head (bottom). Piano A was

rated superior to piano B. "Staccatotouch" in forte, C4.

Having observed these differences between the two hammers from the
eminent vs. the medium quality piano, our interest in the hammer properties
and their influence on tone quality was aroused. The next observation, that a
loose hammer head, which always is connected with a bad tone quality,
prevented the ripple mode vibrations from developing (Fig. 12, bottom), gave
further indications that these vibrations are in some way connected with the
tone generation in the piano.
The same conclusion could have been reached by asking an experienced
piano technician, who would tell you that in traditional manufacturing, the
hammer shanks are assorted according to their tap tone - the resonance
frequency as heard when the shank is dropped on the bench - before the
hammer heads are glued to the shanks. Shanks with high tap tones are used
in the treble
and vice versa.
Quite correctly,
of the
hammers of
the
experimental
piano, a bass
hammer
exhibited a
lower "ripple"
mode
frequency (15%) than the
middle C
hammer, while
the
corresponding
frequency for a
treble hammer
was much
higher (+80%).

Fig. 13. Approximate shapes and frequencies of two hammer

resonances during acceleration towards the string; "backwash" (top)
and "ripple" (bottom).
The hammer resonances were further investigated by a technique called
modal analysis, which calculates the motion of the hammer at the resonance
frequencies. These measurements indicated that during the upward
acceleration while the hammer is supported by the jack under the roller, the
hammer exhibits a series of resonances, of which two are shown in Fig. 13. At
the lowest resonance at approximately 50 Hz, the hammer shank flexes over
its entire length with the hammer head as a mass load at the end. This is the
resonance corresponding to the "backwash" earlier discussed in connection
with the key motion. At the next resonance at 250 Hz - corresponding to the
"ripple" mode - the hammer shank shows a higher order bending resonance.
Interestingly, at this resonance the top of the hammer head vibrates back and
forth in the string direction.

The pianist and the touch

In trying to connect the observations of the hammer vibrations with the tone
generation, we automatically return to the question of the pianist's "touch"
and the conflicting opinions of physicists and pianists hinted at in the
introduction. Before trying to answer, we must first clarify the question.
Physicists usually claim that as the mechanical contact between the key and
the hammer is broken before the hammer strikes the string, the pianist can
only influence the final velocity of the hammer and thereby the loudness, and
nothing more. Many pianists on the other hand, claim that important shadings
in the character of the notes can be achieved by applying different types of
touch, and that such a skill is an important component of the art of piano
playing.
First of all it is important to realize that the term "touch" probably is used with
several different meanings. If a pianist is said to have a "beautiful touch," it
may refer to the way a melody part is lifted above an accompaniment, or how
certain notes in a chord are emphasized. This seems mainly to be a question
of the timing and strength of certain notes relative to other notes, factors

which have been shown to separate the artist from the amateur. But in
certain connections, a "beautiful" or a "bad" touch can refer to the character
of a single note at a given dynamic level, a topic which has interested
prominent pedagogues and even created tensions between pianists of
different schools.
Surprisingly, a strong candidate for part of the answer has nothing to do with
the normal string motion. It is probably so that a characteristic percussive
component ("thump") at the onset of the note plays a decisive role for the
character of the piano tone. This "thump" is generated by the key as it hits
the stop rail on the key frame. The impact shock excites the keybed (the
supporting surface under the action), and partly also the soundboard and iron
frame.
The significance of the "thump" sound is illustrated in sound example 8, in
which the normal airborne sound of a grand piano and the sound of the string
vibrations in isolation can be compared. The listener will probably agree that
the normal piano sound as recorded in the room has a certain resemblance
with the sounds in a blacksmith's shop. The string sound component on the
other hand, lacks something of the interesting piano character, resembling a
plucked string more closely than a struck one. Once these components have
been identified, they are usually easy to distinguish in all piano tones.
The "thump-component" is undoubtedly excited differently depending on the
touch and could be assumed to be characteristic of a pianist's way of playing.
The importance of this component of the piano sound is further illustrated by
knowing that the recognized piano manufacturers select the wood for the
keybed with great care in order to achieve the right "thump" quality.
Nothing definite can be said yet about the pianist's ability to influence the
tone quality by controlling the motion of the hammer It is true that the entire
history of the hammer motion during acceleration can be very different
depending on the way the key is depressed (cf. Fig. 11). But this observation
does not automatically imply that the interaction between hammer and string
is influenced in some way. As mentioned, the hammer is flying freely the final
distance before string contact. However, we have recently observed that the
motion of the freely flying hammer can be somewhat different for slightly
different types of touch (see Fig. 14). This is due to the "ripple" resonance,
which is seen to influence the hammer motion during the last milliseconds
before string contact, i.e. after "let-off." In this way, it is possible that a
hammer resonance could serve as a "memory" of the history of the hammer
motion. This would allow the pianist to have at least an indirect influence on
the very final part of the hammer motion, even after mechanical contact
between key and hammer has ceased.

Fig. 14. Comparison of the vertical motion of the hammer head before string
contact for slightly different types of touch and regulations of the let-off
distance ("staccato-touch," mezzo forte, C4). The dashed lines indicate the
moment of contact between jack and escapement dolly ("let-off" begins).
Note that the motion of the hammer head can be influenced by the "ripple"
mode during the short interval between this line and string contact. The
curve at the top corresponds to a longer setting of the let-off distance (3 mm)
than normal.

However, we still have to be very careful in the

interpretation of these results. Although the
observations suggest that the hammer can
make a rubbing motion against the string
during contact, it has not yet been shown that
such a motion takes place. Even if it does, it
remains to be shown that a motion of this kind
could influence the string excitation and hence
the tone quality.
In summarizing the present results, we cannot rule out the possibility that the
pianist's touch may have an influence on the character of the piano tone. As
regards the initial "thump" it seems rather clear that it contributes to the
character of the note, while an actual influence on the tone character via the
hammer motion has not been verified yet.

String vibrations
We now leave the "interfacing" steps of the action and hammer and focus our
attention on the result, the vibrating string. The detection of the string motion
was accomplished by utilizing the law of induction - "when a conducting wire
is moving in a magnetic field a voltage is generated across the wire." For this
purpose we applied a concentrated magnetic field at a desired point along
the string by the use of a small, strong magnet. The induced voltage over the
string - unfortunately very low due to the short-circuiting iron frame - was
proportional to the string velocity at the point of the magnet.

String motion
The string motion on each side of a hammer in the middle section of the
piano is illustrated in Fig. 15. On the side facing the bridge (upper panel) one
sees the following.
First the initial pulse, or hump (I) passes on its way to the bridge. Then
nothing happens for a period of time, while the string is at rest a little
displaced relative to its equilibrium position. After some delay, corresponding

to the travelling time to the bridge and back again, the pulse returns (II), now
turned upside down (inverted) on reflection at the bridge. The pulse continues
to the agraffe where it is reflected once more and turned right side up. Shortly
after this reflection, the pulse returns to the observation point (III). (Because
of the short distance between the hammer and the agraffe, the travelling
time from the hammer and back again is very short, and the incoming pulse
(II) and reflected pulse (III) partly merge.) The first period of the string motion
is now completed, and the pulse continues towards the bridge for the next
round trip, and the process repeats.
The curve displaying the string velocity may be somewhat more difficult to
interpret, but is in fact more informative on the very details of the process. A
hump passing the magnet, which is observed as a single pulse in the
displacement curve, corresponds to a positive and a negative peak in the
velocity curve. This is so since the string moves in the opposite direction
during the latter half of hump when the string is restored to its initial position.
Remember also that the velocity is high where the slope of the displacement
curve is steep.
On the other side of the hammer, towards the agraffe (Fig. 15, lower panel),
the picture is entirely different during the initial moment when the hammer is
still in contact with the string. During that period, the hammer acts as a
temporary string termination and the initial pulse is reflected back and forth
on the short string segment between the hammer and the agraffe. This
causes repeated impulses on the hammer, and after about four or five such
impulses the hammer is released from the string. In fact, this motion of the
trapped pulse on the short string segment is the major mechanism of
hammer release for most notes on the piano.

Fig. 15. String motions close to the hammer; bridge side, observation
point B (upper panel), and agraffe side, observation point A (lower
panel) fro a C4 note atfortelevel.In the displacement curve (I) denotes
the initial outgoing pulse, (II) the same pulse after the first reflection
(at the bridge), and (III) the same pulse after the second reflection (at
the agraffe). The corresponding pulses in the velocity curve are
denoted by 1, 2 and 3. Note that each passing displacement pulse
corresponds to a positive velocity wave (up) as well as a negative
(down). The round-trip time for a pulse on the string (period time) is
indicated by T. Observe that the string motion on the agraffe side is
entirely different from the motion on the bridge side during the
hammer-string contact.

Bass - mid - treble

We can now proceed and compare the string motion and corresponding
spectra in the bass, mid and treble sections, respectively (see Fig. 16).
The pulse pattern on the string, described above for a midrange note (Fig.
15), is in fact even more pronounced for the bass notes. Due to the relatively
short excitation pulse in comparison to the fundamental period (cf. Fig. 8), a
bass string remains at rest for a long period of time before the first reflected
pulse returns. Surprisingly, the returning pulse is foreboded by a ripple-like
motion with growing amplitude. This behavior is caused by a strange
phenomenon called dispersion, which is a manifestation of the stiffness of the
string. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, the propagating pulse is
made up of many Fourier components (partials), each with its own frequency.
Due to the stiffness, those Fourier components with high frequencies
propagate with slightly higher velocity and thus returns a little earlier, which
causes the spread of the pulse.

Fig. 16. Comparison of the string waveforms (velocities) for treble (C7, top),
mid (C4, middle) and bass notes (C2, bottom) played mezzo forte. The pulse
character of the string motion is clearly seen for the bass note, while
completely obscured in the
treble.

The string motion in the treble

is very different from the
pulses observed in the mid
and bass sections. This is due
to the width of the initial
pulse, which is so long in
relation to the round trip time
on the string, that it is no
longer possible to observe
individual pulses. The
outgoing and reflected pulses
get mixed up and form a
pattern resembling a standing wave.
The corresponding spectra for the bass, mid and treble notes also show
interesting differences (see Fig. 17). As predicted in the discussion of the
hammer-string contact durations, the treble contains only few partials, but

these reach high frequencies (about 10 kHz for the treble note in Fig. 17). The
middle register note contains more partials, up to approximately 7 kHz. The
bass is very rich in partials, but on the other hand they do not extend beyond
4 kHz. These dramatic spectral differences reflect the present preferences of
the piano designer.

Fig. 17. The corresponding spectra for the notes in Fig. 16. The treble note
(top) shows only a few partials but these reach high frequencies. The bass
note on the other hand (bottom), is rich in partials, but they do not extend
very high in frequency.

By changing the hammer

properties, remarkable
differences in spectra can be
obtained (see Fig. 18). The
three spectra in this figure all
refer to middle C (C4), struck
with different hammers. By
means of a treble hammer
(C7) the spectrum can be
extended beyond 10 kHz,
compared to the normal 7
kHz. With a bass hammer (C2)
on the other hand, the spectrum is cut off at approximately 4 kHz. Apparently
none of these extremes are appreciated by the manufacturers of today (or
the customers).

Fig. 18. Spectrum of the note

C4 (mf), illustrating the
influence of hammer
properties. The original
hammer (middle) is replaced
by a treble hammer (C7, top)
and a bass hammer (C2,
bottom). Note that the
spectral changes are
substantial, resembling the
spectral differences between
bass - mid - treble in Fig. 17.

Voicing
The spectral properties can also be influenced by the piano technician. By a
procedure called voicing, in which the hammer felt is treated with needles,
the technician gradually works out the optimum stiffness of the felt. Not
surprisingly, this procedure gives smaller changes than the preceding
experiment with exchanged hammers (see Fig. 19).

Fig. 19. Effects of voicing (C4, mf), showing the changes in waveform and
spectra when a hammer which initially is much too hard (full line), is needled
to normal stiffness (dashed
line), and eventually "ruined"
(thin line).

In this experiment, a hammer

which initially was much too
hard was softened in steps
until it was destroyed. While
the changes may appear very small as viewed in the string waveform, the
spectral changes are in fact substantial, reducing the upper limit of the
spectra from about 8 kHz to approximately 4 kHz.
By normal playing, the felt gradually compresses and the strings introduce
grooves in the hammer surface. Once in a while - the keener the pianist, the
more frequently - the instrument is ready for a reshaping of the hammers (in

which the outer layers of felt are removed by filing), followed by a voicing.
Since a proper voicing procedure is not reversible - the hammer cannot be
made harder in a satisfactory way once it has been needled too much - it is
strongly recommended to always consult an authorized piano technician.

The nonlinear hammer

The most remarkable feature of the tone generation in the piano still remains
to be presented. In almost all traditional instruments, the tone quality
changes with the dynamic level. This means that a note in forte not only is an
amplified version of the same note in piano, but also contains many more
high frequency partials. Apparently this has been a desired property in the
design of the traditional musical instruments - which by the way has caused
the designers of synthesizers much trouble - but the reasons for it can only be
speculated on. One answer could be that the traditional instruments simulate
the properties of the human voice, for which such a spectral sharpening with
level is normal, and in fact almost impossible to suppress.
Anyway, the boosting of the higher partials with rising level can be achieved
by a variety of mechanisms, different for different types of instruments. They
have only one property in common; the generated waveform - be it a
variation in air pressure as in the wind instruments or the motion of a string
as in the violin or in the piano - will exhibit more abrupt twists and turns and
hence more high frequency Fourier components (partials), the higher the
dynamic level. For instance, in the clarinet the design of the reed and the
closing surface of the mouthpiece are responsible for the increasing
"distortion" of the waveform with rising level. In the violin, a strange friction
characteristic between the rosined bow hair and the string serves the same
purpose.
A corresponding feature is also incorporated in the piano. The secret is hidden
in the felt hammers which become progressively harder the more they are
compressed (nonlinear stiffness). The result is remarkably indeed; the
hammer "feels" soft to the string when striking at a low velocity (piano), but
"transforms" to a much stiffer piece of felt when striking at a high velocity
(forte). This increase in effective stiffness sharpens the initial pulse created at
hammer contact, and the high-frequency part of the spectrum is enhanced at
loud dynamics, as illustrated in Fig. 20. The changes are large, in fact much
larger than the changes reached in the experiments with exchanged
hammers or voicing. It is very likely that without this design feature of "an
automatic treble control connected to the volume knob," the piano would
never have reached its present high appreciation.

Fig. 20. Comparison of the spectra for a piano tone at three dynamic levels, p
- mf - f, showing the boost of the higher partials with rising dynamic level
(C4).

The properties of the

hammers are thus most
critical to the performance of
a piano. In paraphrasing
certain advertisements of
automobile manufacturers it
could be said: "Use only
original spare parts!" and
indeed, poor hammers will
certainly ruin the sound of
even the best of pianos. Also,
service should be carried out
by professionals only. An
experienced piano
tuner/technician should be welcomed periodically into every home which
appreciates a well-playing piano.

Coda
In closing this exploration of the initial stages of the tone production in the
piano, it is tempting to conclude that the simpler a design may look, the more
sophisticated its function appears to be. For instance, it was no great surprise
to observe that a rather complicated process takes place in the elaborate
action during a stroke. However, the flexing hammer shank and the nonlinear
hammer felt - both seemingly very simple parts - showed a much more
complex function than we had imagined.
The "simple" piano hammer, which is decisive for the tone quality, still hide
some secrets, and more research awaits before they can be completely
revealed. In the meantime, we may continue to play and enjoy the piano
unconcerned, even though we do not know exactly how the tone is produced,
not even in the initial stages.

Acknowledgments
The authors are indebted to the piano technicians at the Swedish Radio
Company, in particular Hans Norn and Conny Carlsson, for their patient
sharing of expertise concerning pianos and piano regulation. The kind
participation of pianists Elisabeth von Waldstein and Ove Lundin in the
experiments is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are given to The
Swedish Radio Company for generously making one of their grand pianos
available for the experiments.

Recommended reading
The interested reader can now and then find rewarding articles in the
international journals on music and acoustics. We especially recommend the
following articles, which cover different aspects of the material we have
presented.
Boutillon, X. (1988): "Model for piano hammers: Experimental determination
and digital simulation," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 83, pp.
746-754.
Hall, D. (1986): "Piano string excitation in the case of a small hammer mass,"
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, pp. 141-147.
Hall, D. (1987): "Piano string excitation II: General solution for a hard narrow
hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 535-546.
Hall, D. (1987): "Piano string excitation III: General solution for a soft narrow
hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 547-555.
Hall, D. & Clark, P. (1987): "Piano string excitation IV: The question of missing
modes," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, pp. 1913-1918..
Hall, D. & Askenfelt, A. (1988): "Piano string excitation V: Spectra for real
hammers and strings," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 1627-1638.
Hart, H., Fuller, M. & Lusby, W. (1934): "A precision study of piano touch and
tone," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 6, pp. 80-94.
MacKenzie, C.L., Vaneerd, D.L., Graham E.D., Huron, D.B. & Wills B.L. (1986).
"The effect of tonal structure on rhythm in piano performance," Music
Perception 4(2), pp. 215-225.
Podlesack, M. & Lee R. (1988): "Dispersion of waves in piano strings," J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 305-317.
Sloboda, J. (1983): "The communication of musical metre in piano
performance," Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 35A, pp. 377396.
Suzuki, H. (1987): "Model analysis of a hammer-string interaction," J. Acoust.
Soc. Am. 82, pp. 1145-1151.

About the authors

Anders Askenfelt and Erik Jansson received their basic training from the
School of Electrical Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm. After finishing their studies they joined the Music Acoustics Group
at the Department of Speech Communication at the same institute; Jansson
as a founding member in 1967 and Askenfelt in 1975. Since then they have
been active in research in music acoustics, receiving their doctorates in 1973
and 1988, respectively. While Jansson has concentrated on the acoustics of
the violin and the guitar, Askenfelt has been active in computer transcription
of melodies, acoustical analysis of voice quality, and, more recently, research
on the acoustics of the bowed instruments and the piano. They both enjoy
music as amateur string players.

The hammer and the string

Donald E. Hall

Introduction
If we want to have a full understanding of how the best piano music is
heard, we have many things to consider, as I have outlined in Fig. 1.
Many important and complicated things happen in our fingers, ears,
and brains; I can recommend a recent book for some enjoyable reading
about those things (Wilson 1986). Even the physical processes through
which the piano generates sound (the motions of the hammer, strings,
and the soundboard) involve several stages which all require careful
work to understand. I want to start by supposing that the hammer is
already moving in the proper way, and studying how it gives its energy
to the string. If we could understand that striking process completely,
then we could know what kind of string vibration reaches the bridge
and serves as input for the more difficult question of how the
soundboard works.
We can see better what kind of problem we have by comparing some
other instruments. When we pluck a guitar, harp, or harpsichord, the
process is well described by saying that the string is first held steadily
in a triangular shape; at the moment of release, the finger or plectrum
"suddenly" disappears and leaves the string to vibrate freely. This
motion of the string by itself is a simple enough physical problem that
we can summarize it in Fig. 2. When we show the spectrum, which tells
the strength of each harmonic component in the string vibrations, the
triangular initial shape of the string always provides an envelope curve
requiring that the vibration level decreases by 6 dB (meaning 1/4 as
much energy) for every octave higher in frequency. The particular place
where the plucking was done acts further to suppress any harmonics
which have nodes at that point; for example, plucking a 50 cm long
string 10 cm from one end gives a spectrum in which the fifth, tenth,
and fifteenth etc harmonics are absent.

Fig. 1. Steps in the process of playing the piano.

Fig. 2. Theoretical spectrum of vibration mode energies for a string

plucked one-fifth of its length
from one end.

If we try to think of a similar

simple picture for a piano string,
we might consider two
possibilities. First, imagine that
the hammer pushes the string
into a triangular shape, as for the
harpsichord; then the string must
push the hammer back down in a similar way as an arrow is moved by
a bow-string (Fig. 3). If that motion is slow enough that the string
always has the shape of a triangle, merely getting more and more
shallow, we can predict a harmonic spectrum much like that for
plucking. The only difference is that it falls off at a faster rate, 12 dB
per octave. Unfortunately, this prediction is very different from what we
measure in real pianos. That is not surprising when we say that we
should not expect that picture to be correct unless the hammer is much
heavier than the string, which is true only for the extreme treble end of
a piano.
Fig. 3. Naive prediction of possible vibration spectrum for a thin string
struck by a very massive
hammer.

A second simple picture would be

that the hammer bounces away
so quickly that most of the string
does not even begin to move
while the hammer is touching.
This picture leads again to an
incorrect prediction, namely that the harmonic strengths do not fall off
at all toward higher frequencies (0 dB/oct), apart from the "holes"

related to the striking position (Fig. 4). Again, we realize that we should
not expect this picture to be correct unless the hammer is much lighter
than the string, as in the extreme bass range - and yet, even there, the
predictions do not agree well with measurements. You will notice that
these two incorrect pictures are quite contradictory as to whether the
piano's sound would have a brighter or a darker spectrum (0 dB/oct or
-12 dB/oct) than a harpsichord (-6 dB/oct).
Fig. 4. Naive prediction of possible vibration spectrum for a string
struck a very brief blow by a
hammer with very little mass.

We see that we can only come to

a correct understanding by
admitting that the hammer
remains in contact with the string
for a finite time, during which the
force exerted by the hammer
upon the string may change in a
complex way. In Fig. 5 we are reminded of how the effective hammer
mass may vary only from about 12 g in the bass to 6 g in the treble,
while the string masses cover a much wider range. (Note that where
there is double or triple stringing, it is the total string mass for each
note that is important here.) Since the hammer mass makes it about an
equal partner with the string through much of the important middle
range of the piano, we are not surprised to see in Fig. 6 that measured
contact times in the middle range are quite similar to half of the period
with which the string would vibrate alone - and longer than the
vibration periods of most of the upper harmonics.
Fig. 5. Comparison of hammer mass (m) with total string mass (M) on a
typical grand piano.

Fig. 6. Comparison of string mode

frequencies with typical hammer

contact durations.

So if we want to understand what is happening during this process we

must be able to measure the string and hammer motion on time scales
shorter than a millisecond. And, to construct a correct theory
explaining this process, we must study how the hammer and string
each control what the other is doing during that very brief time of
contact. Appropriate things to try to understand would include:

Duration of hammer-string contact - how long?

Energy transfer to the string - how efficient?
String motion after contact ends - what spectrum?
Parameters - How do each of those depend upon:

a. Striking position (fraction of string length)

b. Hammer mass (compared to string mass)
c. Hammer stiffness ("hard" vs. "soft")
d. Hammer velocity (pp vs. ff)
Other possible complications (less important):
a. Hammer width
b. Hammer resistance (energy dissipation)
c. String stiffness
d. Loss of energy to the soundboard

Idealized theory - a brief summary

Let me describe what we find if we try to calculate what happens with
the simplest possible model of the hammer-string interaction. (Details
may be found, along with a survey of the history of this problem, in Hall
(1986, 1987a, 1987b).) There is a fairly simple differential equation
that describes what must happen if the hammer is pictured as only an
extra mass temporarily attached to the string (Fig. 7). We can write
solutions to this equation that represent first a simple wave travelling
away from the hammer in both directions (the curve labelled 0), and
then the reflection of this wave from the ends of the string. When a
reflected wave tries to pass the hammer, it pushes downward on it, and
this interaction generates a new outgoing wave (labelled 1). This wave
in turn, after reflection from the ends, gives rise to grandchildren
(labelled 2), and so on. Thus, if the hammer remains in contact long
enough, the total disturbance will include a large number of waves
travelling in both directions. Such a theory, with perfectly hard
hammers, will surely not predict what happens in a normal piano. But it
could be applied to the case where a very "tinny" sound is achieved by
putting thumbtacks (an American term; you may know them as
"drawing pins") in the hammers.

Fig. 7. Shapes of the successive generations of waves created on a

flexible string by the impact of a point-mass hammer; (0) initial wave,
(1) daughter wave, (2) granddaughter wave, etc. The curves are
normalized so that they may represent any key. Time is given in
multiples ("units") of the typical hammer deceleration time (mc/2T)
and the displacement in multiples of (mcV/2T), where m is the hammer
mass, c is the propagation velocity on the string, T is the string
tension, and V is the initial hammer velocity. For a blow in the middle
register at mf the "units" would typically correspond to 1 ms and 1
mm, respectively.

Fig. 8. Representation of a soft

hammer as a mass with a spring
between it and the string. The
compression of the hammer is
equal to the difference between
the displacement of the hammer
after string contact (n), and the

displacement of the string (y).

If we admit that the normal felt hammers are soft, we must go on to do

our calculations based on a picture where a spring cushions the contact
of the hammer mass with the string (Fig. 8). Now the exact shape of
the wave travelling along the string depends on the strength of the
spring (Fig. 9a). Here 0.1 denotes small compliance, meaning a strong
spring and a stiff hammer; 1.5 means large compliance, a weak spring
and a soft hammer. Figs. 9(b) and (c) show the effect of the compliance

on the daughter and granddaughter waves. It is not surprising that

greater compliance makes a smoother, more gentle wave.
Fig 9. Initial wave (a) and its descendants (b) and (c) created by impact
of an idealized soft hammer on a
string. The same "units" as in Fig.
7.

Now doing a complete calculation

of the string motion, including all
these waves, would be very
impractical by hand. But it is an
ideal problem for a small
computer, which can produce pictures like Fig. 10 showing the total
effect of all the reflected waves on the shape of the string.
Fig. 10. Example of successive shapes taken by a string after hammer
impact. The vertical lines represent how fast each part of the string is
moving.

The computer program can be

responsible not only for the
arithmetic, but also for deciding
at each moment how many waves
are present, and for determining
when the hammer finally loses
contact with the string. A typical
result is shown in Fig. 11, expressed in terms of the history of the force
applied to the string. See how a soft hammer pushes rather steadily on
the string, but a very hard hammer gives a series of sharp pulses of
force. Once this information is known, it can be used to calculate how
much energy has been delivered to the string, and how that energy is
divided among the different harmonic modes.
Fig. 11. Force history for an idealized hammer with mass equal to that
of the string, striking at 1/8 its length from one end. Examples of
hammer compliance range from 0 (perfectly hard) to 0.8 (rather soft).
This plot is normalized, using the same "unit" for time as in Fig. 7.
Force is given in multiples of (2TV/c). For a mf blow in the middle
register this "unit" would
correspond to approximately 10
N.

What is most interesting is to ask

the computer to do many of these
calculations, in order to see how
the results depend on the
properties of the hammer. Fig. 12
shows some sample predicted spectra, with very hard hammers at the
back and softer ones toward the front; as we would expect, this says
that the softer hammers would not have as much of the higher
harmonics in their sound.
Fig. 12. Sample predicted spectra for a simplified (linear) hammer as a
function of its compliance (softness).

Comparison with
measurements
We should not trust those
calculations too much without
making some measurements on
real pianos. I had the opportunity
to make such measurements
together with Anders Askenfelt in
1985 at the Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm (which is
reported in more detail in Hall &
Askenfelt, 1988). One of the
things we did (Fig. 13) was to
measure the string motion on a 2
meter Grotrian-Steinweg piano.
For this we placed a small magnet so that the string would move
between its poles; this motion generated an electrical voltage which we
could record and analyze.
Fig. 13. Placement of detectors for measuring string velocity and
hammer acceleration.

In sample results for middle C

(Fig. 14), we can observe a
repeated pattern of string motion
when it is vibrating freely. But during the time the hammer is in contact
with the string, we see evidence of the action of individual reflected
waves travelling between the hammer and the agraffe. (The upper
oscilloscope trace tells directly about the force acting between hammer
and string.)

Fig. 14. Oscilloscope traces of hammer acceleration (top), which is

proportional to force, and of string velocity (bottom) for middle C
played mezzo forte.

A spectrum analysis of this data

shows (Fig. 15) rapidly declining
strength for higher mode
numbers. If we compare a 12
dB/oct curve, we can see that the measured spectra are much steeper,
especially for pianissimo playing, so that our simple "first guess" (cf.
Fig. 3) is not nearly good enough in explaining what happens. Another
interesting result came when we measured a prepared set of hammers
with different degrees of "pricking" (voicing) of the felt (Fig. 16).
Fig. 15. Measured string vibration spectra for middle C, struck with
different degrees of force.

Fig. 16. The effect upon string

vibration spectra when the
hammer is treated by "pricking"
(voicing); (1) "too hard", (3)
"normal", and (4) "too soft."

Cases (1) and (4) were too hard

and too soft, respectively, to be
satisfactory to the piano
technician, and they produce
easily measurable differences in
strengths of the high harmonics.
Treatment of hammers by a
skilled piano technician will
control their effective stiffness
within about 5 or 10%, or even
less.
Now we must compare such
measurements with predictions
made by the computer (Fig. 17).
We find that there is resemblance in some of the general features of
the spectra, but definitely not good agreement in detail, no matter
which value of hammer stiffness we try. To see what is probably the
most important reason for this, look back again at Fig. 15, and notice
that the pianissimo spectrum is much steeper than the fortissimo. This
means, as all musicians realize, that the sound of fortissimo playing is
not the same as if you merely play pianissimo and use an electronic
amplifier. The first case is not merely louder, it has a brighter tone
quality as well.
Fig. 17. Predictions from linear theory, to be compared with Figs. 15
and 16. Compliance varies from 0.1 (hard) to 0.9 (soft).

But the theory I have described so

far is a "linear" theory. This means
one in which a doubling of the
original hammer velocity would
simply double the amplitude of
string motion, double the
soundboard motion, and double
the air motion at your eardrum,
without changing any other detail.
That is, it predicts the same
spectrum shape for both piano
and forte playing; a single curve
shifted upward and downward
would cover every case. This is
clearly wrong, and it will be important for us to identify which part of
the system has "nonlinear" properties, and devise some way of
including that in a better theory.
I believe the crucial part of the system lies in the hammers. In order to
show this, Askenfelt and I made some measurements of how the
hammers from the Steinweg piano act in a controlled situation outside
the piano. We mounted a force measuring device in the chuck of a drill
press, and placed the entire keybed below it. Then when we hit the
keys in the normal way, any hammer could be thrown against what is
effectively a solid wall instead of against yielding strings. We recorded
how the force on the hammer changed during the brief contact by
using a storage oscilloscope, with results like those in Fig. 18. Now if
the hammer were an ideal "linear" device, those two curves would be
equally wide. This phenomenon would be like the swinging of a
pendulum, which for a given length takes the same amount of time
whether it swings ten degrees or only one degree. But contact time
was actually much shorter for the stronger blow; therefore the hammer
felt acts as a non-ideal, nonlinear spring. To get an idea of how such a
spring works, one can think of a helical spring in which the distance
between the turns (pitch) gets successively smaller. If the force needed
to compress the spring the first centimeter is, let's say, 10 N, then the
next centimeter may take not 20 N, but 40 or even 80 N, depending on
the degree of nonlinearity.

Fig. 18. Force histories when a real piano hammer hits a rigid wall. The
vertical scale is expanded for the soft blow (pp), during which the
maximum force was less than
1/10 as much as for the hard blow
(ff).

We examined the nonlinearity in

the hammers by recording a
series of blows for two hammers
in each octave, producing data for
each hammer that we analyze
graphically as shown in Fig. 19.
Here the lines would be horizontal
if the hammer were a linear
device; the greater the slopes of these lines, the greater degree of
nonlinearity, and therefore the greater difference in the way the
hammer will act between pianissimo and fortissimo playing.
Fig. 19. Decrease in contact time with increasing strength of blow,
graphed so that greater slope indicates greater degree of nonlinearity
in hammer stiffness.

Fig. 20 a,b,c,d. Variation of

nonlinearity exponent from bass
to treble for several different sets
of hammers.

To
see

whether there is any definite trend in the hammer properties from bass
to treble, we use the slopes from the graphs to compute a value
(exponent) telling the degree of nonlinearity for the individual
hammers (see Fig. 20a). Here a value of one (1) for the exponent (at
the left-hand margin) would represent linear behavior. The more
important result in this figure seems to be a greater degree of
nonlinearity toward the treble. The decrease in contact time from bass
to treble is mainly a result of the decreasing hammer mass.
I have more recently measured several other sets of hammers in the
same way (Figs. 20b,c,d). While the hammers on the Steinweg piano
had been in use for some time, the Isaac hammers were a brand-new
set just being installed on the large Steinway D in my university's Music
Recital Hall, and were not yet "played-in". The Muir Wood is a Scottish
piano from around 1800 - 1810, restored and located in the
Department of Music at the University of California in Berkeley. There is
perhaps less difference between treble and bass here, but from the
variations one suspects that the hammers are presently not in very
good, uniformly-voiced condition. A grand in the piano technician's
workshop at my university (CSUS) was chosen as an example of an
instrument with a very worn set of hammers in poor condition,
producing a harsh, unpleasant sound (Fig. 20d).
I do not yet feel sure that I know how to interpret these differences
from one set of hammers to another. If I had guessed before
measuring, I would have thought the harsher sound of the bad
hammers might mean a larger value of the nonlinearity exponent, but
according to the measurements it is really smaller instead. I can
explain this if, when we said harsh or unpleasant, what we really meant
was specifically that we did not get as much darker tone as we
expected when trying to play softly. Askenfelt has suggested that this
may be partly because well-used hammers develop flat grooves that
cannot make as gentle a contact as the original rounded shape. Before

stating any firm conclusions, I would want to make this kind of

measurements on many more sets of hammers, from different makers
and in different conditions.

Other complications
Before investing all our future efforts in the exact behavior of the
hammers, it would be good to remind ourselves whether there are
other effects not represented in our ideal theory which would also need
to be taken into account. Fig. 21 (from Hall & Askenfelt 1988) tries to
summarize several possibilities. One we can easily dispose of is the
fact that the hammer contact is spread over as much as 5 or 10 mm of
string rather than being concentrated at a single point. This is still such
a small fraction of the string length that it should not matter except for
frequencies above the line at the upper left - but these are so high that
their strength in piano spectra is of no importance anyway.
Fig. 21. Estimates of frequencies above which hammer width, string
stiffness, and soundboard motion become important in determining
string spectra. (The "pulse decay" line indicates an upper limit for
trusting the picture of Fig. 4, and "bow-and-arrow" a lower limit for
trusting Fig. 3.)

Another problem with the simple

theory is that it assumes both
ends of the string are mounted on
perfectly rigid supports, yet we
know that the bridge actually
moves. This means that some
energy is lost from the string to
the soundboard, so that the
reflected waves are not really
quite as strong as the theory
supposed. This in turn changes
the force that the hammer will
provide later when it is interacting
with those waves. I have estimated that this should be taken into
account for the last octave or two at the treble end (above the line

"soundboard" in Fig. 21), where it will help explain why those spectra
are very steep; but otherwise it may be of only minor importance.
A third effect which is more generally important comes from the finite
thickness of the strings. Where it works quite well to talk of harpsichord
strings as if they are perfectly flexible, piano strings are much thicker
and resist bending. This stiffness, I should point out, is not a nonlinear
effect; it is merely something which aids the applied tension in trying to
make the string straight. I have estimated in two different ways when
this might become important, shown by the two lines "stiffness" in the
upper part of Fig. 21. Above these lines, the predicted spectra should
really be a little steeper, as the stiffness makes it more difficult to set
those high-frequency vibration modes into motion. But in the central
part of this figure is a region, including something like the first ten
harmonics of middleC, for instance, where none of these other details
should be very important. In this region, which covers the larger
portion of the strong and interesting parts of the spectra, I believe the
correct description of the hammer is the key to understanding what
happens in real pianos.

Further possibilities
What else can we do that may give us a more firm understanding of
the interaction of the string and hammer, and of how to shape that
interaction to produce whatever spectra we find most useful musically?
As for theory, there is a first step that is not very difficult. That is to
calculate the wave shape, or the corresponding force (Fig. 22), for the
very first wave that travels away from the hammer. The upper panel
shows the case of a linear hammer, already treated in great detail in
our earlier theory, with the curves peaking sooner for harder hammers
and more gradually for softer ones. The lower panel shows how these
force histories would change in the presence of a certain fairly large
degree of nonlinearity. Perhaps there is a suggestion in these curves
that the nonlinearity tends to increase their similarity, making them
less dependent upon our ability to control the stiffness (K) exactly.
Fig. 22. Force histories (initial wave only) for linear hammers, exponent
p=1 (upper panel) and nonlinear hammers with exponent p=4 (lower
panel). In each case, larger values of K denote harder hammers.
Normalized plot, the same "units" as in Fig. 11.

Unfortunately, those pictures only

tell us how the hammer interacts
with an infinitely long string. We
cannot go on to include reflected
waves by simply adding several of
these together; some entirely
different mathematical method
must be introduced to solve the
nonlinear equations of motion.
Some sample calculations of this
sort have recently been done by
Suzuki and by Boutillon. Fig. 23,
which is from Suzuki (1987),
shows one calculated case of a
bass hammer interacting with the
A0 string of a 6-foot Steinway grand. Curve (a) shows the hammer
position and curve (b) the string displacement at the contact point; we
may notice that where (b) rises above (a) the hammer loses contact,
but there is renewed contact when the reflected wave arrives from the
agraffe. Curve (c) gives the force experienced by the string, from which
the vibration spectrum can be obtained. Fig. 24, taken from Boutillon
(1988), shows a calculated case for one particular hammer hitting F4;
the dashed line gives the calculated history of hammer acceleration,
and the solid line is a corresponding measurement.
Fig. 23. Time histories of (a) hammer displacement, (b) string
displacement, and (c) interaction force for a bass hammer (A0) with
nonlinear compliance (Suzuki
1987).

Fig. 24. Comparison of predicted

(dashed) and measured (solid)
accelerations for a nonlinear
hammer (F4), (Boutillon 1988).

But we do not yet have a wide

range of such cases computed in
order to see how the results
change if we alter the important
parameters such as hammer
mass, stiffness, striking point, and
degree of nonlinearity. Nor can we
yet compare the predictions with
actual measurements for a wide
range of notes and of different pianos. I have some students interested
in working on this problem, and I entertain some hopes that we may
write a new computer program that will make it possible to explore the
action of nonlinear hammers in a systematic way. Perhaps it is not very
far in the future that we may be able to claim the ability both to
understand and to predict with some accuracy just what changes in
sound will result when string and hammer designs are changed in
various ways. We could hope that this would eventually contribute to
useful diagnosis of what could be expected from any proposed change
in hammer design or manufacturing technique.
In the meantime, I could see the possibility of one practical application
of this work in the manufacture of new piano hammers. Good quality
control on a new set of hammers means both that we achieve desired
values of hardness and nonlinearity, and that these properties change
smoothly as we go along the row of hammers. Either before or after
work by the voicing technician, this could be checked by placing the
keybed in a frame where it would be moved in 88 steps. At each step a
mechanical striker would hit the key, perhaps 5 or 6 times, ranging
from very weak to very strong impulses. The hammer would hit a force
transducer, and a computer would evaluate the height and width of the
signal produced. With this data, the computer could estimate the
effective stiffness and nonlinearity of each hammer head, and produce
either graphs showing how these properties vary from treble to bass, or
lists with warnings of which hammers are not in good agreement with
their neighbors. One could perhaps also devise a quick-clamp rig so
that a set of hammer heads could be tested in this way without being
mounted on shanks in an action. I hasten to add that this test should
only be an aid to the technician, and would never entirely replace the
voicer's ear as the final judge of good hammer preparation.

Acknowledgements
Many of the figures in this paper originally appeared in the references,
and are reproduced by courtesy of the American Institute of Physics.

References
Boutillon, X. (1988): "Model for piano hammers: Experimental
determination and digital simulation," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 746754.
Hall, D. (1986): "Piano string excitation in the case of small hammer
mass," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, pp. 141-147.
Hall, D. (1987a): "Piano string excitation II: General solution for a hard
narrow hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 535-546.
Hall, D. (1987b): "Piano string excitation III: General solution for a soft
narrow hammer," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, pp. 547-555.
Hall, D. & Clark, P. (1987): "Piano string excitation IV: The question of
missing modes," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 1913-1918.
Hall, D. & Askenfelt, A. (1988): "Piano string excitation V: Spectra for
real hammers and strings," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, pp. 1627-1638.
Suzuki, H. (1987): "Model analysis of a hammer-string interaction," J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, pp. 1145-1151.
Wilson, F. (1986): Tone Deaf and All Thumbs (Viking Penguin, New
York)

About the author

Donald E. Hall received his doctorate in Physics from Stanford
University in 1967, as well as an M.A. in Music from the University of
Iowa in 1973. He has been on the faculty of California State University
in Sacramento since 1974. He is the author of two textbooks, Musical
Acoustics (1980) and Basic Acoustics (1987). His research has dealt
with piano string and hammer interaction and with the perception of
musical interval mistuning; he has also worked in relativity and
astrophysics. He leads a second life as a church organist and choral
singer.

The coupled motion of piano

strings
Gabriel Weinreich

Introduction
As everyone knows, the word "piano" for the instrument with whose
acoustics this seminar is concerned derives from the name given to it
by its inventor, Bartolommeo Cristofori, who shortly after its invention
in c. 1709 had his creation described as "gravicembalo
(~clavicembalo) col piano e forte" because, unlike the ordinary
clavicembalo (that is, harpsichord), it was capable of varying its
dynamic level. The description is, in some ways, even more apt than its
originator intended. In the preceding lecture, Donald Hall has described
how the radical nonlinearity of the hammer produces, along with the
dynamic range, a correspondingly large range of different tone colours,
giving the phrase piano e forte added significance. My lecture will be
concerned with an even more peculiar fact, namely that, in a certain
sense, the gravicembalo piano e forte can be said to be playing piano
and forte at the same time!

Loud and sustained

To understand how this phenomenon originates, let us consider a
hypothetical engineer assigned to develop a musical instrument in
which a string which is initially excited by a hammer blow (or, for that
matter, by plucking) is to be coupled to a soundboard, and so produce
a musical sound. Obviously, this engineer would have to make a
decision with regard to the degree of coupling between the string and
the soundboard, i.e., how efficiently the string vibrations are
transferred to the soundboard. Here he would immediately encounter a
difficulty, for the following reason. A strong coupling will lead to a
sound which is initially loud but decays very quickly in time, since the
same strong coupling must lead to a high rate of energy transfer from
string to soundboard. If, on the other hand, the engineer wishes to
have a long sustained sound, so as to give the instrument more of what
one might call a "singing" quality, he must keep the coupling to the
soundboard weak - and hence be constrained to a sound which is quiet
and lacks carrying power.

It is true, of course, that even without any soundboard coupling the

string vibration would not last forever, since other mechanisms of
energy loss - such as internal friction of the string, viscous dissipation
in the air, and direct sound radiation from the string motion - do exist,
but in practice this is irrelevant. To the best of my knowledge, in all
musically useful string applications the dominant mechanism of string
damping is motion of the end supports, that is, coupling of the bridge
to the soundboard.
To a practical engineer, the competition between loudness and
sustaining power would point to the need for some sort of compromise
or "trade-off;" but a musical instrument is not, by its nature, an
"engineering compromise." Most objects capable of producing sounds
are, after all, not used as musical instruments. The ones which are
selected for such a purpose always represent some type of "miracle,"
that is, a situation in which a seeming engineering limitation is
overcome in an unexpected way.
In connection with the piano, it turns out that our ear - or, more
correctly, our ear plus brain - has a way of judging both loudness and
sustaining power in a way that might not have been predicted.
Specifically, a sound is perceived as loud if it starts out loud, even if it
then decays quickly; and it is perceived as sustained if some part of it
is sustained, even if that part is rather weak. Thus a sound which starts
out with a high but quickly decaying amplitude, and which then, having
reached a rather low level, switches to a much smaller rate of decay so that there is a sustained but subdued "tail" or "aftersound" - is
perceived as being both loud and sustained. And that is precisely the
miracle of the piano tone.

Vertical and horizontal motion

The typical decay of a piano tone is shown in Fig. 1, which displays the
sound pressure level as a function of time. We see that the string is
struck by the hammer at about t = 2 seconds, and the damper is
released, stopping the vibration, at about t = 17 seconds. The vertical
scale is in decibels, so that the ordinate of the graph is proportional to
the logarithm of the pressure amplitude. In such a plot, the drop in
level would appear as a straight line if the decay of the sound were of a
type called exponential, which is what a physicist would expect from a
linear system such as the string and the soundboard. Instead, it is clear
that the curve breaks into two portions of quite different decay rates.
The initial portion, called "prompt sound," drops (in this case) at a rate
of about 8 dB/sec; the final one, called "aftersound," at less than one-

quarter that rate. As we shall see, the prompt sound is simply related
to the theoretical decay rate determined by the string's coupling to the
soundboard; whereas the aftersound, which gives the piano its
perceived sustaining power, represents the "miracle."

Fig 1. Typical decay of a piano tone as illustrated by the sound

pressure level versus time (Eb3 = 311 Hz). The decay process is
divided into two parts; an initial attack part with a fast decay ("prompt
sound") followed by a sustained
part with slow decay
("aftersound").

The most interesting factor

contributing to the existence of
aftersound is the presence of
more than one string for each piano note, and the consequent
dynamical coupling that occurs among the strings struck by the same
hammer. In the case of Fig. 1, however, we are dealing with a simpler
phenomenon, since in this particular experiment only one of the three
strings belonging to this note (Eb4) was allowed to sound. It should
also be added that the curve in Fig. 1 was obtained by taking the signal
produced by a microphone and filtering out all but the fundamental
frequency; the complex decay pattern can not, in other words, be
attributed to variously decaying partials (although such a factor may
contribute to the way the overall note is perceived). Rather, the
behavior of the decaying curve in Fig. 1 is explained by noting that
even a single string vibrating at its fundamental frequency has two
distinct modes of vibration corresponding to two possible directions of
vibration (polarization); "vertical" and "horizontal." Here, we use the
adjectives appropriate for a grand piano although the same
phenomenon of course takes place also in the upright piano.
What is happening here is that the vertical polarization is the primary
one excited by the hammer, and so begins its life at a much higher
amplitude than the horizontal one. However, since the bridge, which is
attached to the soundboard, "gives" much more easily in the vertical
than in the horizontal direction, the decay of the vertical mode is also

much more rapid. As a result, the relatively slight amount of horizontal

vibration becomes, after a while, dominant.
Although this hypothesis can be verified by direct observation of the
string vibration, it is interesting to approach it in a somewhat different
way. In Fig. 2, we show another graph of sound level versus time (again
at the fundamental frequency) which was obtained by the same
procedure as Fig. 1 except that the location of the microphone is
different. The data indicate clearly that we are dealing with two
independent modes of vibration, which are producing sound waves
through two separate radiating "antenna patterns." When one or the
other mode dominates - that is, either near the beginning or near the
end of the note - the two graphs show identical behavior; but when the
modes radiate with approximately equal amplitude, they can add either
"constructively" or "destructively," depending on microphone
placement.
Fig. 2 The decay of the same note as in Fig. 1 but recorded at a
different microphone position. A comparison with Fig. 1 reveals the
existence of two components in the sound field, radiated by the
vertical and horizontal soundboard motions respectively. The two
components are of equal strength during an interval around the
intersection of the sloping lines. In this region the resulting sound level
varies strongly with microphone
position.
In fact, it is quite reasonable to
suppose that the vibration pattern
of the soundboard in response to
a vertical force at the bridge is
quite different from what it is for a
horizontal force; and since at this
frequency at about 311 Hz the
wavelength of the sound is of the order of 1 meter, comparable to the
size of the piano, the directional radiation pattern for the two can easily
be quite different.

Two or more strings

The more interesting mechanism which leads to an aftersound - and
which, as we shall see, makes it possible to adjust its relative amount
by careful tuning - is the one on which the title of this lecture is based,

namely the dynamical coupling among the three (or two) strings struck
by the same hammer. Let us imagine two identical (and identically
tuned) strings attached to the bridge at the same place. It is possible
for them to vibrate in the same phase, both going up and down at the
same time; or in opposite phase, one going up while the other is going
down. (In the present discussion we concentrate, for simplicity, on the
vertical motion.) In the latter, "antisymmetric," case the forces exerted
by the two strings on the bridge will cancel, so the bridge will not move
at all, just as though it were infinitely rigid. Hence, the decay rate of
the vibration will be very slow. Conversely, if the motion is in phase, or
"symmetric," the force on the bridge (and hence its displacement) will
be twice as large as it would be for one string, so the decay rate will be
doubled by this coupling. In this way we see the possibility for the
overall vibration to decompose into a prompt sound and an aftersound.
The experimental data of Figs. 3 and 4 illustrate this behavior. The
graph in Fig. 3 shows the vibration level of a single string; it differs
from our previous graphs in that this time the motion of the string is
directly measured (by a capacitive probe designed to be sensitive only
to the vertical motion), rather than recording the radiated sound via a
microphone. As in Fig. 1, felt wedges prevent all but one string from
vibrating. The general behavior is equivalent to the prompt sound part
of Fig. 1, except that the time scale of the graph has been considerably
expanded.
Fig. 3 Typical decay of the vertical string vibrations when only one
string in a trichord is left free to
vibrate.

The graph in Fig. 4 is obtained in

exactly the same way, except that
one felt wedge is removed so that
one other string of the trichord is
allowed to vibrate. It must be emphasized that the capacitive vibration
probe is not disturbed; what we are looking at is the vertical motion of
the same string as before, except that a second string has been
"brought into the system." Clearly, a new mode of vibration has now
appeared, one in which the original string can vibrate for a much

longer time before it loses its energy. It is, in fact, precisely the
antisymmetric mode which is allowing this to happen.
Fig. 4 The decay pattern of the same string as in Fig. 3 when another
string in the same trichord is left free to vibrate (but not struck by the
hammer). The decay of the first string is strongly influenced by the
motion of the other string.

A closely related phenomenon is

illustrated in Figs. 5 and 6. The
curves in Fig. 5 show both the
vibration level of one of the
strings and the (simultaneous)
sound level, produced when two
strings are struck by a single hammer under circumstances similar to
Fig. 4. In Fig. 6 the experiment is repeated, but at about t = 11 seconds
a felt wedge is suddenly inserted so as to immobilize the second string.
We see that the vibration of the first string, as well as the produced
sound, change immediately to the higher decay rate. This is, indeed,
expected, since the antisymmetric mode (in which the force exerted by
one string on the bridge is cancelled by the other string) is no longer
possible when only one string is vibrating. But it is especially
interesting that, whereas the string vibration level simply switches to a
steeper slope, the sound level simultaneously jumps up by close to 20
dB. This is, of course, because the single string exerts a much larger
force on the bridge than the two strings vibrating antisymmetrically.
The phenomenon may, possibly, have some musical interest, in that if
it were appropriately mechanized it would enable a pianist to introduce
an accent into the middle of a sustained note, which in a normal piano
is impossible.

Fig. 5 Sound pressure level and string vibration level versus time
for two strings struck by the same
hammer. The humps reflect beats between the strings.

Fig. 6 The same curves as in Fig.

5 but now the vibrations of one
of the strings is stopped at t =
12 s by a felt wedge. This
terminates the interaction
between the strings, as a result
of which the vibrations of the
other string change decay rate
and the sound level
momentarily increases by 20
dB.

It is interesting to note parenthetically the rather complicated beat

structure in Figs. 5 and 6, which is not precisely the same for the
vibration and the sound. Presumably, the discrepancy comes from the
horizontal modes, which contribute to the sound but not to the vertical
motion.
Two questions immediately arise: (a) If the hammer hits both strings
equally and at the same moment, why is the motion not completely
symmetric, resulting in "purely prompt" sound? (b) Even if the
antisymmetric vibration is somehow excited, why does it produce any
sound at all, seeing that it exerts no force on the bridge? The first
question could be answered by pointing out that a real hammer must
have some geometrical imperfection so that the impact on the two
strings would not be absolutely identical; the second, by the fact that
the two strings do not touch the bridge at the exact same location.
These answers, although correct in principle, are not very satisfying
because an aftersound that depends entirely on the presence of
imperfections would also tend to be erratic and unpredictable in
amount. More specifically, the ratio of the amplitude of aftersound to
the amplitude of prompt sound would vary randomly when one note is

compared with its neighbouring ones. This would give even a very good
piano a rather uneven "singing quality." In fact, the correct
understanding of the string motion requires us to consider the further
degree of freedom which results from the two strings not being tuned
in an identical manner.
"Mistuned" strings
The mathematical treatment of the coupled motion of two strings
which are tuned almost, but not exactly, alike is rather complicated,
since the symmetry arguments which implicitly led to the identification
of the "symmetric" and "antisymmetric" motions as normal modes of
vibration no longer work. We shall, nonetheless, try to give some idea
of the behavior of this complex system, but before we begin one thing
must be made very clear, and that is that the presence of "mistuning"
does not necessarily lead to beats, if by "mistuning" we mean a
difference between the vibration frequencies of the two strings when
they are individually excited (that is, when one string is made to sound
with the other one damped). The point is, of course, that the
frequencies of the two strings vibrating at the same time are affected
by the coupling which occurs between them due to the bridge not
being perfectly rigid.
A different, and perhaps clearer, way of explaining the distinction
between the frequency of an isolated string and the frequency at which
it vibrates when coupled, is to note first that the frequency of vibration
of a string whose end-support is not completely rigid depends on the
type of resiliency the string meets at the support, or using the scientific
term, the impedance of the support, see Fig. 7. If the support is
"springy," that is, one which displaces sideways in the direction in
which the string applies a force to it, there will no longer be an exact
node at the support. Instead, the extrapolated node will be somewhat
beyond the physical end of the string; or, in other words, the string will
"think" that it is longer than it really is, causing it to lower its frequency.
Fig. 7 Illustration of the influence of the end-supports on the vibration
frequency of a string. A "springy" support (top) lowers the frequency
without damping the motion, because it makes the string act as if it
was a little bit longer than it really is. A "massy" support (middle)
raises the frequency without damping its motion. The reason is that
the string must pull back on the mass to reverse its direction, the
result being that the string acts as if it was a little bit shorter than it
really is. A resistive support (bottom) does not influence the vibration
frequency but damps the motion. The friction at the sliding contact at

the support means that energy is drained from the string and the
vibrations decay.

The opposite happens with a

"massy" support, that is, a
support whose motion is inertialimited: in this case, its
acceleration is in the direction of
the applied force, and its
displacement in the opposite
direction. The node then moves
inward from the physical end of
the string, with the result that the
string "thinks" that it is shorter
than it really is so that its
frequency is raised. Finally, if the
support is purely "resistive," so
that its velocity is in the direction of the force, its frequency is neither
raised nor lowered, but its decay rate is increased.
If now a second string is attached to the bridge at the same (or almost
the same) location, its presence will affect the impedance of the bridge
as seen by the first string. The result is that the "frequency of the first
string" will be different from its vibration frequency before the other
string was introduced. How large this shift will be depends on the
difference between the new "frequency of the first string" and its
original frequency. We put the phrase "frequency of the first string" in
quotation marks because it is really no longer that, but rather it is the
frequency of the coupled normal mode in which both strings are
vibrating.
To get some notion of how these coupled frequencies are affected by
"mistuning" the strings, we should think about another impedance - not
the impedance presented to the string by the bridge, but rather the
impedance presented to the bridge by the other string. A simple
demonstration experiment will illustrate this behavior. If I attach a rope
(representing the string) to a fixed chair and shake the other end up
and down at some arbitrary frequency of my choosing, the fact that I
am holding the end of a rope will make very little difference to what I
feel. But if the frequency I choose corresponds to one of the resonant

frequencies of the string, the place where I hold it becomes a node and
"refuses to move." It is as though the fixed point at the other end of the
string were transferred to the holding point; even though I am exerting
a considerable force amplitude up and down, my hand almost does not
move at all. Paraphrasing this behavior in terms of impedance, we
would say that the impedance presented by the string to its support is
generally quite low, but becomes very high as the frequency
approaches a resonant frequency of the string.
It should be clear from this discussion that if we observe the motion of
two coupled strings, of which one is left untouched while the other is
tuned, we would observe that the untouched string will change its
frequency (although it remains at constant tension) as the second
string is tuned. This is under condition that the two strings are close to
a unison, since under those circumstances the impedance of the
second string at the frequency of the first string becomes quite high,
modifying the effective impedance of the bridge as seen by the first
string. What is not so clear - and, in fact, requires considerable
mathematical discussion - is precisely what this frequency shift will be.
Interestingly, it turns out that it can be in either direction, depending
on the impedance of the bridge itself. In particular, there exists a
possibility for the two frequencies to "attract" and become locked
together, so that slight tuning of either string does not affect the
frequency of either but only the decay rates. This is what we meant by
saying that a slight "mistuning" of the strings does not necessarily lead
to the appearance of beats.
The last figure, Fig. 8, shows some theoretical curves of the history of
the vertical force exerted on the soundboard when driven by two
strings, initially excited by a perfectly symmetric hammer blow. The
different curves correspond to different "mistunings," and the bridge
impedance is assumed such as to allow the "locking together" of the
frequencies (which is not always the case in practice). In calculating
these curves, we have assumed parameters more or less typical of the
middle range of a piano keyboard. For this case, there are no beats
unless the "mistuning" is more than about 0.3 Hz; more correctly, for
smaller "mistunings" there is just a single "beat null," followed by a
beatless aftersound whose level depends on the "mistuning." Above
about 0.3 Hz beats do appear, as exemplified by the curve drawn for a
"mistuning" of 0.64 Hz; even here, however, the time between beats is
a bit larger than the 1.6 seconds which would be naively predicted
(1/0.64 Hz = 1.6 s). The importance of Fig. 8 is that it indicates how an
excellent tuner can, under some circumstances, use very fine tuning

control in order to adjust the aftersound of each note to a more uniform

level than if it were due entirely to imperfections in the hammer or the
string mountings.

Fig. 8 Calculated vertical force on the soundboard when driven by two

strings with different "mistuning" ( f). In this example beats occur only
when the "mistuning" is larger than 0.3 Hz, illustrated by the curve for
f = 0.64 Hz. For smaller values the strings lock to a common frequency,
and the effect of the "mistuning" is to control the level of the
aftersound (cf. the curves for f =
0.22 Hz and 0.06 Hz).

In fact, it was observed by Kirk in

1959 that a carefully and
competently tuned piano had the
strings of the trichords tuned
slightly differently by an amount
that appeared to vary randomly
from note to note. This
randomness may, however, hide
an underlying regularity. If, for example, you take a sheet of paper and
tear it, examination of one of the pieces will reveal an irregular and
seemingly random rough edge; yet comparison with the other piece
will show that one irregularity exactly matches the other. Our
hypothesis here is that, in the same way, the seeming "randomness" of
the tuning comes from the fact that the skilful tuner was adjusting this
quantity to another randomness, namely the randomness of hammer
imperfections, in such a way that the result is not random. It would be
interesting to test this hypothesis by investigating, for example,
whether good tuners are consistent in the "mistuning" of the individual
trichords when tuning the same piano over and over again.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to the Royal Institute of Technology
and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music for inviting me to participate

in this seminar, and to the United States National Science Foundation

for supporting my research at the University of Michigan

References
Kirk, R. (1959): "Tuning preferences for piano unison groups," Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America 31(12), pp. 1644-1648.

About the author

Gabriel Weinreich has been dedicated to physics since the start of his
career. After receiving his doctorate in Physics from Columbia
University in 1953 he joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he
became a member of its pioneering group in solid state physics. Since
1960 he has been professor in Physics at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor. He has written textbooks on solid state physics and
thermodynamics, as well as general physics. His research in musical
acoustics, stimulated by his own playing of the piano and the cello, has
dealt primarily with piano strings and bowed instruments. He is an
ordained priest of the Episcopal Church.

The strings and the soundboard

Klaus Wogram

Introduction
When a piano key is depressed, the hammer is accelerated from its rest
position via a series of levers, called the "action," and catapulted
against the string. Shortly before the string impact, the direct contact
between the action and the hammer is interrupted, and the hammer is
carried the rest of the way to the string by its momentum.
The shape and amplitude of the force pulse generated at the impact is
determined by the final hammer velocity and by a combination of the
mechanical properties of the hammer head and the strings (mass ratio,
striking position, and stiffness of the hammer). The hammers and
strings are designed so as to make the force pulse shorter in the treble
than in the bass (see Fig. 1).
Such a pulse corresponds to a spectrum, which spans a broad
frequency range (up to 10 kHz for a treble hammer). From this
continuous pulse spectrum, the string filters out the frequency
components corresponding to its resonant frequencies. These string
spectrum components transfer the vibration energy to the bridge. Both
the properties of the string material and the dimensions of the string
influence this energy transfer.
Fig. 1. Force pulses of the hammer impacts for a bass note (No: 2 =
Bb0) and a treble note (No: 88 =
C8).

The bridge serves as the

connecting element between the
string and the soundboard,
transferring the vibrations of the
string into the soundboard. The
strings are distributed over the entire length of the bridge which

extends approximately diagonally across the soundboard. As a

consequence the strings will deliver their vibration energy at different
points on the soundboard, which means that they will all encounter
different matching conditions.
The soundboard transforms the mechanical vibrations into radiated
sound. As a first approximation, the soundboard acts like a large
diaphragm clamped around its edge. Like all diaphragms, the
soundboard exhibits a series of resonances, the individual intensities
being determined by the point of excitation.
If we ignore the resonances for a moment, a diaphragm exhibits a
radiation efficiency that increases as a function of frequency and
reaches a theoretical maximum in the upper treble region. This would
mean an optimal match between the soundboard and the surrounding
medium in the upper treble, provided no losses occurred in the wood.
Losses do occur, however, and these result in a decrease in the sound
radiation in the upper treble.
With increasing frequency, the dimensions of the soundboard also
become increasingly large in relation to the bending wavelength. This
means that the soundboard no longer vibrates as a simple stiff
diaphragm, but tends to divide into a number of individual vibrating
areas. The result is a pronounced peaking of the directional radiation,
as well as a decrease in the radiated acoustic energy - air is uselessly
pumped between areas which vibrate in opposite phases.
In the lowest frequency region, the lack of separation between the
upper and lower surface of the soundboard reduces the sound radiation
(acoustic short-circuiting).
Altogether these phenomena result in a favored region of acoustic
radiation at frequencies between approximately 100 Hz and 2000 Hz.
Returning to the soundboard resonances, we note that it is particularly
easy to vibrate the soundboard at the resonant frequencies. Using a
constant driving force, we therefore obtain a high vibration amplitude
and velocity at these frequencies. The quotient of force and velocity
gives us a highly informative quantity called mechanical impedance,
which can be easily measured as a function of frequency (see box
below). The resonance frequencies of the soundboard are readily
observed in such an impedance curve, where we find them at the
valleys, or minimum values. The contribution to the sound radiation
from each resonance must, however, be determined from another

measurement, that is, sound level versus frequency. This quantity is

also readily measured.
In addition, by means of a modern technique called modal analysis, the
vibration pattern of the soundboard at the resonances can be
computed from simple measurements and visualized on a terminal
screen. This technique also allows computer simulations of changes in
the shape and thickness of the soundboard, which thus can be
evaluated before a new prototype instrument is built.

Input impedance and soundboard properties

The vibration energy of the string is transferred to the soundboard,
transformed from mechanical to acoustic energy, and radiated as
airborne sound. The rate at which this energy flow takes place is
determined by the properties of the soundboard (the "consumer") in
relation to the properties of the string (the source). In engineering
terms this relation is referred to as "impedance matching." The loading
exerted by the soundboard on the string can be expressed by means of
its input impedance (Z), which is defined as the excitation force (F)
divided by the resulting velocity (v) at the point of excitation.
Z = F/v
A high value of the input impedance means that a large force must be
expended in order to achieve a certain vibration velocity, whereas a
low impedance means that a smaller force is sufficient to achieve the
same velocity. Actually the impedance also includes a phase angle (),
which tells us about the character of the impedance (massy or
springy).
Measurement technique
A measuring setup for input impedance of piano soundboards is shown
in Fig. 2 (Wogram 1984). An electrodynamic shaker is mounted on a
carriage, which is moveable to any position of the soundboard. On the
shaker an impedance head is mounted, which consists of two vibration
pickups. The impedance head makes it possible to measure the
excitation force and vibration velocity simultaneously, in other words,
the two quantities needed to obtain the input impedance. A block
diagram of the measuring setup and a description of the measurement
procedure are given in the box below.

Fig. 2a. Measuring setup for impedance measurements. Stand (vertical

beams) and crossbeam with
movable carriage.

Fig 2b. Detailed view of bridge

with shaker, impedance head
and metal pin connecting to the

bridge.

In order to obtain a representative set of measurements, no less than

fourteen measuring points were analyzed for each instrument, spaced
about 12 cm apart along the bridges (see Fig. 3). The strings were
muted with strips of felt in order to prevent sympathetic vibrations of
the strings from influencing the measurements.

Fig. 3. Soundboard of an upright piano with the positions of the

measuring points (MP1 - MP14)
marked on the bridges.

Measurement of input
impedance and sound level
The technique used for an
impedance measurement is
briefly the following. The soundboard is driven by a shaker at a
selected point on the bridge, the force being transmitted via the
impedance head. The shaker is fed by a swept sine wave in the
frequency range from 20 Hz to 10 kHz, supplied by a tuneable oscillator
and an amplitude controlled amplifier (AVC). The output signal of the
acceleration pickup (A) in the impedance head is integrated and fed to
the AVC-amplifier as a velocity signal (v). This amplifier regulates the
input signal to the shaker so that the velocity at the bridge remains
constant over the entire frequency range. Since the velocity remains
constant, the force (F) is proportional to the input impedance (Z), which
means that with proper calibration, the obtained force curve can be
interpreted as an impedance curve.
The magnitude of the impedance thus determined is registered by a
level recorder, and the phase angle by a second similar instrument.
Another level recorder connected to other measuring instruments
simultaneously registers the sound level at a distance of 2 m from the
soundboard. In this manner, we obtain three curves for each measuring
point representing the magnitude of the impedance (Z), and its phase
angle (), and the sound level (L). These three curves summarise the
acoustic properties of the soundboard.

Fig. 4. Block diagram of input impedance and sound level

measurements.

Input
impedance
An example of
measured
input
impedance
and radiated
sound level
curves for an
upright piano
assembly
consisting of the wooden frame, soundboard and metal plate, strung
and tuned to normal pitch, is shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the
impedance curve is characterized by prominent tall peaks and valleys
in the lower part, superimposed on a continual decrease from 100 Hz
to the highest frequencies. For those readers who are particularly
interested in engineering units we may add that the impedance
reaches values around 1000 kg/s at 100 Hz and 10 kg/s at 10 000 Hz.
All measuring points are characterized by a uniform decrease in
impedance above 1000 Hz at a rate of about 6 dB per octave, without
any prominent resonance peaks. The phase angle is close to -90,
which means that the input impedance is dominated in this region by
the resiliency (springiness) of the soundboard. We find a similar
situation in the extreme low frequency region (below 100 Hz); here too
the phase angle is almost -90 and no resonance peaks show up (the
peaks below 50 Hz are not generated by the soundboard but by the
stands and crossbeam holding the electrodynamic shaker).

Fig. 5. Acoustic measurements on an assembled unit for an upright

piano consisting of the wooden frame, soundboard, metal plate and
strings, tuned to normal pitch (MP 7). Input impedance (top), phase
angle (middle), and sound level (bottom). The 0 dB level for impedance
corresponds to 1000 kg/s.

Sound radiation
The corresponding sound level
curve (Fig. 5, bottom)
demonstrates that the
soundboard is incapable of
radiating sound below 100 Hz.
Above this frequency, individual
resonances, which may reinforce
the sound radiation, become
noticeable. At approximately
1000 Hz, the upper limit of the
range of favored sound radiation
is reached. Above this frequency
the sound level decreases
steadily.
The connection between a
soundboard resonance and the
corresponding sound radiation can be demonstrated in a simple way.
By knocking on the soundboard with a finger (preferably close to
measuring point 9), we hear a thump sound with a definite pitch. The
spectrum of this thump sound shows a strong peak at 102 Hz (see Fig.
6, top). This peak, which indicates the pitch of the thump, is due to the
fundamental resonance of the soundboard. The same resonance can be
seen as a minimum in the input impedance curve at the corresponding
frequency (Fig. 6, middle). Also the following maxima (resonances) at
135, 150 and 165 Hz in the sound level curve correspond to minima in
the impedance curve.
Fig. 6. Tap tone and influence of mass loading. The soundboard is
tapped at the treble bridge (MP 9). Sound spectrum (top), input
impedance (middle), and input impedance with a mass load (550 g)
close to the measuring point (bottom). The vertical lines indicate the
frequency of the fundamental resonance of the soundboard.

The input impedance curves can

also be used to demonstrate
changes in the properties of a
soundboard. The resonances of
the soundboard are controlled by
the distribution of mass,
stiffness, and damping. By
changing the mass distribution
of the soundboard in Fig. 6 with
an additional mass at the treble
bridge, we obtain a modified
impedance curve (Fig. 6,
bottom). The resonances below
100 Hz have not changed
(properties of the shaker and
beams), whereas the
fundamental soundboard
resonance has been shifted
down from 102 Hz to 95 Hz. This
is also easily heard by knocking
on the soundboard.

Influence of string tension

In experimental work with
upright pianos, a complete
assembly of the instrument is normally used. Such an assembly
consists of the wooden frame, soundboard, and metal plate, including
the strings tuned to nominal pitch. This means that the soundboard is
under the same load as in the finished piano. However, great care must
be taken to ensure that the strings are muted so they cannot vibrate
during the measurements. For this purpose, narrow strips of felt are
woven through the strings as mentioned above. This operation wastes
valuable time, and the question therefore arose as to whether the
experiments could be conducted on a soundboard without strings, or at
least with the tension brought down, without seriously changing the
results.

To answer this question, measurements were conducted on a

completely strung assembly of an upright piano for which the pitches
were successively lowered (A4 = 440, 415, 220, and 0 Hz). Finally, the
strings were removed altogether. By these changes, the load on the
soundboard was progressively reduced to zero, which would change
the bending stiffness of the soundboard. When the strings were
removed, the vibrating mass was also changed. Plate theory tells us
that both the magnitude of the impedance, as well as the resonance
frequencies will change when these parameters are changed.
The experiments showed that detuning the strings by a semitone, or
even an octave, produces only a small change in bending stiffness. This
can be seen in the impedance curves for the first three conditions,
which are practically identical (see Fig. 7). Not until the tension was
completely let down could an influence on the impedance curve be
observed (Fig. 7 d). In the lower frequency region, the soundboard
resonances were shifted downward. The lowest resonance (leftmost
valley on the Z-curve) was shifted from 115 to 90 Hz when the string
tension was let down completely, while the resonances above 200 Hz
remained essentially uninfluenced.
When the strings were completely removed, the lowest resonance was
shifted further downward (to 70 Hz), and now the upper resonances
were also lowered (Fig. 7 e). However, the general configuration of the
impedance curve remained practically unchanged.

Fig. 7. Influence of string tension

on the input impedance (MP 7):
(a) Normal tuning (A4 = 440 Hz),
(b) a semitone lower (A4 = 415
Hz),
(c) an octave lower (A4 = 220
Hz),
(d) slack strings, and
(e) strings removed.

The sound radiation curves show a somewhat different picture. Above

approximately 1000 Hz the sound radiation does not change to any
appreciable degree - the changes are evident only in the middle and
lower frequency regions. Again, the general configuration of the curve
remains practically unchanged.

Summing up, stringing the back and tuning the strings to playing pitch
are not absolutely necessary for obtaining representative
measurements of the properties of a soundboard. The basic
characteristics of the impedance and sound radiation curves remain
essentially unaffected when the string load is removed. Only the lower
resonances are influenced, resulting in an upward shift of about 50 Hz
when the strings are pulled up to pitch. This can, however, easily be
taken into account when analyzing the data.

Influence of ribbing
The purpose of the soundboard is to radiate a large volume of sound
over a wide frequency range. This would imply that as much as
possible of the energy of the string vibrations should be transferred to
the soundboard. However, this is not the whole story. If the transfer of
energy is too efficient, the decay of the tone will be too abrupt. In order
to achieve a reasonable sustain, the soundboard must reflect a large
portion of the vibration energy back to the strings. Soundboard design
is thus a compromise.
A stiffening of the soundboard would improve the sound radiation
efficiency, as a stiff soundboard is less inclined to subdivide into small
vibrating areas. One purpose of the ribs is precisely to stiffen the
soundboard, which indeed is thin in proportion to its size. Another
purpose is to "homogenize" the soundboard by equalizing the
difference in bending stiffness (elasticity modulus) parallel to and
across the grain. The moduli of elasticity in the two directions are in a
ratio of approximately 20:1 (anisotropism). If this anisotropism is not
compensated for by the addition of ribs running across the grain, the
effective vibrating area is reduced and the radiation efficiency is
decreased over a broad frequency band.

Rib height
The ribs should increase the bending stiffness, but not, on the other
hand, load the soundboard with too much extra mass. For this reason,
experiments were made to determine the general influence of ribs on
input impedance and sound radiation. The experiments were
conducted on a soundboard for which the height of the ribs was
reduced in steps of 25% of the original height. The ribs were planed
down using an electrical router, without removing them from the
soundboard.

Theoretically the moment of inertia of the ribs determines their

stiffness. The moment of inertia (I) of a rib, the cross section of which is
assumed to be rectangular, is:
I=

bh3
3

where b is the width and h is the height of the cross section. If the
height is reduced without changing the width, the result is a rapid
decrease in the moment of inertia and hence in the stiffening effect of
the rib, while the mass decreases much slower (see Fig. 8)
Fig. 8. Changes in mass and stiffness of a rib of rectangular cross
section as rib height is reduced.

The experiments showed that at

the upper end of the treble
bridge, no noticeable change in
the input impedance occurred
when the rib height was
reduced. Here, the ribs do not
play a decisive role, either in
stiffening or in adding mass.
Instead, the boundary conditions at the joint between the soundboard
and the frame exert a greater influence.
In the central region of the soundboard, on the other hand, we may
observe the development of pronounced resonances (valleys) in the
impedance curve below 200 Hz when the rib height is reduced (see Fig.
9). The resonance frequencies are gradually shifted downwards with
decreasing rib height. At the same time, the resonances become more
sharply defined. The difference in level between peaks and valleys
increases, while the average value for the impedance decreases below
200 Hz. Above 500 Hz, the impedance curve is only slightly influenced,
and no shift in the upper resonant frequencies can be observed.
Fig. 9. Influence of ribbing
on the input impedance (MP
7):
(a) Original rib height (100

%)
(b) 75 % of original
(c) 50 % of original
(d) 25 % of original and
(e) no ribbing.

No uniform relation was found between the successive stages of

reduction of the rib height and the changes in the input impedance.
The influence of the first reduction (from 100 to 75% rib height) was
considerably less than that of the second (from 75 to 50%). The
influence seems to be greater once the basic stiffening has been
removed and there is no longer any compensation for the anisotropism
in the moduli of elasticity.
Turning to the sound radiation, the same effects were observed as for
the impedance; the lower resonant frequencies are shifted downwards
and sound radiation is reduced. However, unlike the effect on the
impedance, the reduction in sound radiation extends over the entire
frequency range, even above 500 Hz. This is due to a short-circuiting
phenomenon, as mentioned in the introduction. Above a certain
frequency, the soundboard no longer vibrates as a unit but divides into
a number of vibrating areas, which results in a poorer radiation
efficiency. In addition, the lack of compensation for the anisotropism
causes a reduction in the total vibrating area and hence a poorer
radiation.
From the measurements it can be concluded that the two most
important functions of the ribs are to stiffen the soundboard and to

compensate for the differences in bending stiffness parallel to and

across the grain (anisotropism). The bending stiffness exerts a greater
influence than the mass. For this reason it is more advantageous to use
narrow, high ribs than ribs with a low and wide section.

Number of ribs
We also investigated the changes in the acoustic properties of a
soundboard when the number of ribs, rather than the rib height, is
reduced. An upright assembly of the same type as in the experiment
with rib height was used. Every second rib was removed by routing it
down to the level of the soundboard, and input impedance and sound
radiation were measured. A comparison of these data with those of the
previous experiment showed that a reduction of 50% in the number of
ribs is equivalent to a 25% reduction in the rib height. This applied both
to the input impedance and the sound radiation. The measurements
clearly show that a change in the number of ribs exerts less influence
on the acoustic properties of a soundboard than a change in rib height,
all other parameters being equal.

Decay of the piano tone

As explained by Gabriel Weinreich in the preceding lecture, the decay
of a piano tone is complex. The early decay, the so-called prompt
sound, is of major importance in judging the tone quality. Therefore it
seems reasonable to measure the decay time at the beginning of the
note, from the maximum level to -20 dB (T20). This decay should
depend mainly on the soundboard, more specifically on the impedance
matching between the string and the soundboard motion in the vertical
direction. This is so, since the initial blow of the hammer sets the string
in vibration mainly in this direction.
To test this hypothesis, a complete assembly with frame, soundboard
and plate was fitted with a single string at a few measuring points. The
impedance matching was varied by tuning the string to frequencies at
and close to a soundboard resonance (see Fig. 10). The change in the
impedance matching was registered by observing the change in the
decay time of the fundamental when the string was plucked. Starting
with a string on the treble bridge, the string was first tuned to D4 =
294 Hz (point 1 in Fig. 10, top) and the string tension was then slowly
let down to 210 Hz (point 3). By means of these detunings, we were
able to compare the decay times at peaks, valleys and at intermediate

points with the same impedance value. Of the two intermediate points,
one is located on an upward slope of the curve corresponding to a
positive phase angle (point 5), while the other is on a downward slope
with a negative phase angle (point 4).
Fig. 10. Changing the impedance matching between string and
soundboard by detuning; treble bridge MP 8 (top), and bass bridge MP
12 (bottom). Numbered points indicate the successive frequencies to
which a single string was tuned.

From these experiments, a

number of observations were
made. As expected, the decay
time for the string vibrations is
considerably longer at a peak in
the impedance curve (off
resonance), than in a valley (at
resonance). Further, the decay is
longer when the phase angle is
positive than when the phase
angle is negative. Hence, a good
match between the string and the soundboard is found when the input
impedance is high and the phase angle is positive. The same results
were obtained for a string on the bass bridge (see Fig. 10, bottom).
Sharp valleys (resonances) in the impedance curve exert the strongest
negative influence on the decay time. Consequently, one characteristic
of a high quality soundboard is that the impedance curve exhibit as few
dips as possible, avoiding sharp zigzagging. In addition, the overall
level of the impedance curve should be high enough to ensure
sufficient reflexion of the string energy at the bridge, resulting in a long
decay time.
The decay times for the notes on a small upright piano are plotted in
Fig. 11. As can be seen, the decay times vary drastically among the
notes. In order to judge the perceptual consequences of the irregular
curve we may compare two neighbouring notes, F#4 and G4. From the
graph, we obtain the corresponding T20-values as 3.5 and 0.7 s,

respectively. This large difference in decay time (5:1) suggests an

aggravating difference in sustain between these two adjacent notes.
Fig. 11. Decay times (T20) for the notes of a small upright piano,
corresponding to a 20 dB drop
from maximum sound level

Another example of the

consequences of the irregular
decay times of this particular
piano is the differences between the two chords C3 - C4 - G4 (3.8, 1.7,
0.7 s) and D3 - D4 - A4 (3.4, 3.3, 2.3 s). These relations between the
decay times mean that the first chord will consist mainly of the lowest
note (C3) shortly after the attack, since the two higher notes will fade
away very quickly. In contrast, the spectrum of the second chord will
not change as fast, sounding brighter and fuller compared with the first
chord.

Modal analysis
The results presented so far have illustrated that the measurements of
input impedance and sound radiation are influenced by the position of
the point of excitation. In order to understand this influence we need to
know how the soundboard vibrates. Modal analysis is a convenient
method for this purpose. With this method, it is possible to map the
vibration modes (resonances), and to measure their frequencies and
damping. The motion of the soundboard when vibrating at the
individual modes can also be observed in slow motion on a computer
display, which gives a good understanding of how the soundboard
vibrates.
Fig. 12. Modal analysis, sketch of measurement method.

The
preliminary
measurement
data from the
analyzer (the
complex
transfer
functions) are
later
transmitted to a small computer, which calculates the motion of the
soundboard at the resonances and shows an animated picture of the
vibrating soundboard in slow motion. By a proper choice of perspective
and gain, the vibration distribution of the entire soundboard can be
seen clearly.*
* During the lecture, video recordings of the vibrating soundboard were
shown. In the figures that follow, the soundboard resonances are
illustrated by "snapshots" of the deflections at the positive and
negative maxima, respectively.

Method
The principle of modal analysis is explained in the block diagram in Fig.
12. First, a net of measuring points are marked on the structure under
investigation - in this case the soundboard of a grand piano. The
measuring points are then excited in succession by blows of a small
hammer, featuring a built-in force gauge. A small contact microphone
(accelerometer), which is fixed to the soundboard at a certain point,
registers the resulting vibrations. The electrical signal from the
accelerometer is sent to a computerized analyzer together with the
force signal from the hammer.

Soundboard resonances
Using the technique described above, the modes (resonances) of the
soundboard of a concert grand (length 2.90 m), with the iron plate and
strings included, were investigated (see Fig. 13 - 16).

Fig. 13. First and second mode of the soundboard of a

concert grand piano (length 2.9 m).

The first mode has a resonance frequency of 62 Hz, and the deflection
distribution shows only one vibration maximum with equal phase all
over the soundboard (see Fig. 13, left). The vibration maximum is
located in the front left third of the soundboard. The treble area at the
front end of the treble bridge hardly vibrates at all.
In the second mode at 90 Hz, the front half vibrates in opposite phase
compared to the far half, with a zone of small deflection in the middle
between these areas (Fig. 13, right). In this zone there is a nodal line
running parallel to the keyboard along the middle of the soundboard.
(Modes with this orientation of the nodal lines are sometimes referred
to as longitudinal modes.)

Fig. 14. Third and fourth modes of the same soundboard.

The third mode at 105 Hz (Fig. 14, left) is not a following third
longitudinal mode, but a transversal second mode. In the third
longitudinal mode, three sections with antiphase motions, separated by
two transversal nodal lines, should develop. This third mode at 105 Hz
has the same deflection distribution as the second mode at 90 Hz,
except that the nodal line now runs longitudinally (perpendicular to the
keyboard). Because of the higher stiffness of the treble area, an
asymmetry exists in favor of the bass section.
The fourth mode at 127 Hz is again a longitudinal mode - four vibrating
areas moving in opposite phases divided by three transversal nodal
lines (Fig. 14, right).
For the following two modes (187 and 222 Hz), the low stiffness of the
left part of the soundboard causes a strong motion of this area
compared to the right part (see Fig. 15). In addition, the left part is
divided into three and four zones of vibrations, respectively.
In the following two modes (245 and 325 Hz), vibrating areas can still
be found and identified (see Fig. 16), but for higher modes the vibration
zones become harder to recognize.

Fig. 15. Fifth and sixth modes.

Fig. 16. Seventh and eighth modes.

Important information can be extracted from the modal analysis with

regard to the input impedance for different strings, and the decay of
the corresponding notes. For example, a mode pattern with a large
vibration amplitude at a certain point on the bridge implies a low
impedance and hence an efficient energy transfer from a string
crossing the bridge at this particular point. This means that the decay
time for partials close to this mode frequency will be relatively short.

Simulation of changes in the design

I will end my presentation with a short discussion of how modal
analysis can be used to predict the decay times. The modal analysis
program models the properties of the real soundboard by a set of
hypothesized mathematical resonating systems (with one degree of
freedom). Any changes in the properties of the soundboard can be

simulated in the computer by changing the values of the mass, the

stiffness, and the damping in the measuring points.
The technique is illustrated in Fig. 17, which shows the deflection of a
soundboard at its second mode of 90 Hz (upper panel). The largest
vibration amplitude is found in the front left section and the smallest
around the nodal line (broken line). The nodal line crosses the bridge
near a point (0) where one of the bass strings delivers its vibration
energy to the soundboard. The small vibration amplitude at that point
indicates a high input impedance to the string and consequently a very
long decay time of the prompt sound.
Fig. 17. Second mode at 90 Hz of a grand piano soundboard (top), and
as modified in the computer model, at 101 Hz (bottom). The change in
the modal pattern and frequency is due to a simulated increase in
stiffness at the front left corner (shaded area). Nodal lines are marked
with broken lines. The circles indicate a point on the bridge where a
certain bass string
crosses, see text.

If the stiffness of
the front, left
corner of the
soundboard is
increased in the
computer model
(lower panel,
shaded area), the
shape of the
second mode will
change. The
frequency will be
shifted up to 101
Hz, and the nodal
line turned toward the longitudinal direction of the soundboard. The
motion at the front left section will decrease as would be expected. In
contrast, the vibration amplitude at the point where the bass string
crosses the bridge will increase. This means that the early decay time
will drop as intended - how much is, however, harder to predict.

This example illustrates how modal analysis followed by computer

modifications can assist in the development of pianos, by predicting
the general effects of proposed changes in the design. By means of this
technique, the need for expensive test prototypes can be minimized,
although as yet, not completely excluded.

References
Wogram, K. (1984): "Akustische Untersuchungen an Klavieren," in H.
Junghanns: Der Piano- und Flgelbau (Verlag Das Musikinstrument,
Frankfurt); English version "Acoustical Research on Pianos: Vibrational
Characteristics of the Soundboard," Das Musikinstrument, Vol. 24, pp.
694-702, 776-782, 872-880 (1980).

About the author

Klaus Wogram received his doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) at the Technical Faculty

at the University of Braunschweig in 1972. From the beginning of his
professional career he has been with the Acoustics Department of the
Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt) in Braunschweig, West Germany, where he became the
head of the Musical Acoustics Laboratory in 1985. His research has
dealt particularly with the brass instruments, an interest which he
gained in his early years and has been continuously maintained by the
playing of the jazz trombone.