If you own a piano that is due or even over-due for quality refinishing, repair or restoration of any kind, from Abbeville to Zumbro, to Goodfood to Pinckneyville to Hattiesburg to Hot Coffee, your piano repair is as close as the entrance to your local interstate highway. Our expert movers are picking up, delivering & delighting piano lovers all across Mississippi and the country every day with pianos we repair and restore.
At present, the piano keyboard, with its 7 plus octaves, is the apex of keyboard evolution. Keyboard instruments were not always so evolved. According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music (1975, p. 451), the original keyed instrument was from Greece. It had 19 very large keys. Some stories claim that the keys were so big that the musicians had to play it with the entire fist, rather than a single finger.
The range grew over the centuries. By the beginning of the 13th century, the organ keyboard was over three octaves. By the 17th century the grange had grown to four octaves. Harpsichords began to have five octaves from Bach onward. And in 1794 the first piano keyboard was invented with six octaves. Beethoven used this type of piano keyboard.
The classic piano keyboard most of us are used to has seven full octaves.
In the past, the wooden keys of the piano keyboard were often covered with elephant's ivory. This is no longer the practice. In fact, it is against federal law to import or export ivory into the United States. Historically, the keys were covered with many different materials, including bone, mother-of-pearl, porcelain, tortoise-shell and rare wood veneers.
