Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. A keyboard is a row of levers that you press with your fingers. The most common keyboard instruments are the piano, organ, and different types of electronic keyboards. These include synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments are celestas, which are struck idiophones that use a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually found in bell towers or church belfries.

Today, the word keyboard often means keyboard-style synthesizers and other modern keyboards. These keyboards change the act of pressing keys into electrical signals that make sound. A good player can use the keyboard to control how loud or soft the music is, and other expressive parts of the performance. Modern keyboards, especially digital ones, can make many different sounds, not just piano sounds, using special sound-making technology.

The word keyboard is also used when we are not sure exactly which instrument someone is playing. In the 1700s, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early piano were all popular. A musician might play the same music on any of these instruments. So, when we say "Mozart was a great keyboard player", the word keyboard includes all of these instruments.

The term keyboard groups instruments by how you play them, not by how they make sound. Keyboard instruments can be in these groups (this is just a part of the list):

• aerophones (pipe organ, pump organ, accordion);
• idiophones (celesta, carillon, glasschord);
• chordophones:
  • plucked string instruments (harpsichord, tangent piano, lautenwerck);
  • bowed string instruments (hurdy-gurdy, bowed clavier);
  • struck string instruments (clavichord, piano);
• electrophones (electric pianos, electric and electronic organs, synthesizers, mellotron).

History

See also: History of keyboard instruments

Further information: Piano history and musical performance

The first known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ, made in the third century BC. For a long time, the organ was the main keyboard instrument. Sometimes it used buttons or large levers instead of keys.

Later, new instruments were made, like the clavicymbalum, clavichord, and harpsichord. In 1698 in Italy, Bartolomeo Cristofori made the first modern piano. It was called the gravicèmbalo con piano e forte. This piano let players change the sound by pressing the keys harder or softer. Since then, pianos have changed a lot. In the 1900s, electronic keyboards were made, like the Ondes Martenot and other electronic keyboards.