![]() ![]() How do closer hammers make the piano softer? It simply gives you a bit more control bridging the smaller gap between the hammers and strings. ![]() Rather, it pushes the hammers on a single rail forward towards the strings (pictured below). Mechanically, upright pianos operate very differently and the soft pedal on any upright is not really any kind of “una corda” since it does not shift the keys. The effect then is that the tone is usually quieter but also softer and warmer in timbre. When the soft pedal is engaged, shifting from left to right, the hammer is no longer striking those same grooves. When the hammers are aligned to strike at the normal position, they will, over time, have small grooves in the felt. But what is also simultaneously happening is that the hammers, being shifted out of their usual strike pattern, are also hitting on fresh felt. When you shift the keys using the soft pedal, the piano hammers strike only 2 strings (pictured in the second frame) instead of 3 and thus, the piano becomes softer. Why shift all of the keys? On the majority of the keys on the piano there are 3 strings. This swivel piece sits under the entire keyboard frame and moves all of the keys from left to right. ![]() What’s happening below the surface is that the soft pedal (the left pedal on any piano) is connected to a rod which eventually joins to a lever that swivels. This, in turn makes the hammers off center from the strings they are striking. As you can see in the top picture, the keys move away from the rim at the left. The grand piano shifts all of the keys from left to right slightly. How does “one string” translate into a pedal we also know as the soft pedal? We’ll look at that in just a moment but first, let’s take a look at the structure of the left pedal on the piano called the soft pedal or una corda.įirst of all, grand pianos and upright pianos have very different functioning soft pedals. Being Italian, the phrase “una corda” can be translated “one string”. Cristofori, credited with the invention of the earliest pianos in the 1700’s also installed the “una corda” pedal into his pianos. The soft pedal on the piano also has not-so-quaint a story but interesting nonetheless. I love these kinds of stories that reveal the story behind the phrase. The insinuation is that if you’re “out of sorts”, all production stops until you remove yourself from your work, restock and regroup and then continue on. And so if you were “out of sorts”, meaning that you had run out of that particular letter, you would go into the storage room of letters and get more sorts, another container of that character. ![]() As the day progressed, depending on what the typesetting would require, you might run out of a certain letter, like a letter E or letter A, for example. ![]()
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