Toy piano

The toy piano is a musical instrument, made as a child's toy, but which has also been used in more serious musical contexts. The instrument was invented in Philadelphia in 1872 by a German immigrant named Albert Schoenhut.

Related Topics:
Musical instrument - Toy - Music - 1872 - German - Albert Schoenhut

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It is often in the form of a scaled down model of a piano, usually no more than 50 cm in width, and made out of wood or plastic. The first toy pianos were made in the mid-19th century and were typically uprights, although many toy pianos made today are models of grands. Prices range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.

Related Topics:
Piano - Cm - Wood - Plastic - 19th century

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Rather than hammers hitting strings as on a standard piano, the toy piano sounds by way of hammers hitting metal bars or rods which are fixed at one end. The hammers are connected to the keys by a mechanism similar to that which drives keyboard glockenspiels. This makes it sound more 'tinkly.' Some new toy pianos are electronic.

Related Topics:
Metal - Glockenspiel

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Toy pianos ostensibly use the same musical scale as full size pianos, although their tuning in all but the most expensive models is usually very approximate. Similarly, the pitch to which they are tuned is rarely close to the standard of 440 Hz for the A above middle C.

Related Topics:
Musical scale - Pitch - Hz - Middle C

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A typical toy piano will have a range of one to three octaves. The cheapest models may not have black keys, or the black keys may be painted on. This means they can play the diatonic scale (or an approximately tuned version of it), but not the chromatic scale. Typically, diatonic toy pianos have only eight keys. They can play one octave.

Related Topics:
Octave - Diatonic scale - Chromatic scale

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