Piano for Kids Trivia Quiz

Answer: Upright

The concert grand is very large, very heavy and very expensive, and would be more at home in a concert hall than an ordinary living room. A spinet was a small piano, but are not common today. Pipe organs are powered by air, and produce their music from a collection of pipes. Pipe organs are the largest musical instruments ever built.

Answer: Percussion

Although a piano has strings, it is NOT part of the strings section of an orchestra. Because the strings are not stroked like a violin or plucked like a guitar, but instead they are hit by hammers, the action of producing music is considered percussive.

My picture shows the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with a grand piano holding centre stage, not in its usual spot up the back.

Answer: Octave

From the Latin for 'eight'. There are eight white keys in an octave, in addition to five black ones.
'Crescendo' means to get gradually louder, 'natural' notes are the individual white keys, and a chord is two or more notes played together.

Answer: Metronome

The metronome is used to keep time, or tempo. Moving the weight up or down the shaft adjusts the speed at which the arm moves. It gives a 'click' at each end of its arc, helping the budding Elton John to play at the correct speed.

A plunger mute is used in brass instruments, such as trombones, and changes the sound of the music by interrupting the airflow from the opening, or bell. It is usually made from a modified toilet plunger! A tuning fork helps a piano tuner get exactly the right tone out of each string, and a theodolite is used by a land surveyor.

Answer: Volume control pedal

The 'soft' pedal is on the pianist's left, 'sustenuto' is in the middle and 'sustain', also known as 'damper' pedal is on the right.

The soft pedal changes the angle of the hammers hitting the strings, making them hit one string (una corde, in Italian), instead of the normal two or three. The sustain lifts the damper off the string, allowing the string to vibrate much longer. The sostenuto also sustains, but only the notes that are played when the pedal is pressed.

There is no 'volume' pedal on a piano; however, many electronic keyboards will have a knob or slide control for this purpose.

Answer: Hammers

A soundboard is a large piece of timber that allows the music to amplify. It is attached to the strings. A tone arm is found on an old record player and a banger is a slang term for a sausage!

A hammer is made of wood, with a felt-covered head.

Answer: Treble clef

A treble clef indicates that the notes are above middle C, the centremost key on a piano. Most of these notes would be played with your right hand.
A semibreve is a musical note, also known as a full note. It is one beat long. A crescendo sign is shaped like a sideways 'V', and means to gradually play louder, and staccato means to play a note quickly and sharply, and is indicated by a dot above the note.

Answer: Pianola

A pianola is operated by a perforated roll of paper, with the mechanism inside only requiring a source of power- usually by a 'pianolist' pumping on the two large pedals. It is fun watching a pianola in action, as it looks like the Invisible Man is playing- the keys all move by themselves!

A piano accordion is much smaller than a piano, and is wrapped around the player's body. It also functions by air pressure, but the bellows are operated by hand. A digital piano is a much more modern instrument, and 'pianissimo' is a music term meaning 'very soft'.

Answer: Hammered dulcimer

A cittern is Renaissance-era stringed instrument, similar to a guitar. A sackbut is an early trombone and a sitar is an Indian stringed instrument. George Harrison played a sitar in 'Norwegian Wood'.

The hammered dulcimer shown is from Middle Ages, and is on display at the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Answer: 88

There are 56 white notes and 32 black ones. The earlier pianos had 65 keys. The 88-key layout was created by famous piano-makers, Steinway, in the 1880s.