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Awesome Pianos

A Piano with No Black Keys

A Piano with No Black Keys

Classic.FM recently turned us on to a 97-key piano that has just a single octave. Now, they are showing off another unusual instrument – a piano that only has white keys. Micronet’s Sinhakken piano still has 88 keys, but it looks far more difficult to play without black keys for reference.

Mikroton Microtonal Piano

Mikroton Microtonal Piano

Created by German instrument maker Sauter, the Mikroton is a specially-tuned piano that only has 1/16th of a step between its keys. Despite having nine more keys than a regular piano, it only has a one octave range. Musician Antune demonstrates its ability to produce an incredibly smooth progression of notes.

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Piano Keyboard Desk

Piano Keyboard Desk

Cristiana Felgueiras of Get Hands Dirty shows off an awesome piece of furniture she designed for efficiency in a tiny apartment she’s building out. The desk has a floating design and a built-in electronic piano that slides out from underneath its work surface. She also built a matching rolling cabinet with a secret drawer.

Electric Shock Piano

Electric Shock Piano

There are lots of ways to learn to play the piano. Joel Creates and his friend Eric came up with the cruelest method. Their electric piano keyboard uses negative reinforcement, zapping students with high-voltage electricity if they mess up. It has electrodes on every key, so it shocks the same finger that played the wrong note.

Cleaning a Dusty Old Piano

Cleaning a Dusty Old Piano

With so many nooks and crannies and moving parts, pianos require regular cleaning and maintenance. Josiah Jackson, aka The Piano Doctor volunteered his services to clean a vintage piano with decades of dust and grime. After finishing the laborious task of removing dirt from under its wires, he gave it a full tune-up.

Pictures at an Exhibition Steinway Concert Grand Piano

Pictures at an Exhibition Steinway Concert Grand Piano

One of the most elaborate custom pianos in history, Pictures at an Exhibition, was created by noted painter/pianist Paul Wyse. The one-of-a-kind Steinway & Sons Model D concert grand piano features 24-carat gold, cast bronze, and classically painted scenes to pay tribute to Modest Mussorgsky’s most profound composition for solo piano.

How a Player Piano Works

How a Player Piano Works

Player pianos have been around since the 1890s. Modern models use electronics and servos, but vintage ones use a pedal-powered pneumatic system that forces air through holes in the music roll, actuating pushrods that move its hammers. Chris Plaola shows off an example of this Victorian-era engineering genius.

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Puppet Plays Piano

Puppet Plays Piano

There are different kinds of puppets, from a sock on the hand to complex marionettes controlled by strings. This street performer shows off his mastery of the latter by puppeteering a character to play the piano with a string attached to each finger. We know he’s not playing actual notes, but we’re still impressed.

The Plasma Piano

The Plasma Piano

After melting all of the strings on his piano with high-voltage sparks, Mattias Krantz wanted to see if he could still make music with the thing. So he got to work building a series of circuits that fire plasma arcs onto the piano’s metal backboard to make sounds when he presses the piano’s keys. But it wasn’t easy getting it to work.

Literal Electric Piano

Literal Electric Piano

Musician and maker Mattias Krantz has done some pretty crazy things to pianos. This time, he teamed up with Mehdi Sadaghdar of Electroboom to create the most dangerous piano ever. Using a bunch of cheap camera capacitors, he modified his hammer-head piano to create high-voltage sparks when played.

Popsicle Stick Kalimba

Popsicle Stick Kalimba

The kalimba is a small musical instrument that’s played by thumping your fingers on its springy metal keys. But the same idea can be DIYed using a bunch of popsicle sticks, screwed in place at varying lengths along a board. Mr. Mash shows off his homemade instrument, along with an abridged version of his how-to video.

Piano Key Testing Rig

Piano Key Testing Rig

Pianos must be able to play hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of notes during their lifetimes. This fascinating video shows how one piano manufacturer tests their mechanisms while loosening up any stiff parts before delivery. The machine has 88 “fingers” that each strike a key in rapid succession.

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Macro Footage Inside a Piano

Macro Footage Inside a Piano

The Laowa 24mm Probe Lens has enabled some pretty amazing views of the world. Jens from Another Perspective stuck the long and skinny macro lens inside a piano to give us an up-close and personal look at its strings, hammers, and other mechanical components.

Chopstix: The Talking Piano

Chopstix: The Talking Piano

Engineer Mark Rober takes a look at a very special piano that can transform speech into music. Known as Chopstix, the Edelweiss player piano was modified so it can play all of its keys simultaneously. It feeds on a steady diet of MIDI files which it can play at incredibly fast speeds. It can even perform Rush E.

3D Printed Grand Piano

3D Printed Grand Piano

Want a grand piano for your house, but don’t have enough room for one? Why not 3D print a mini version? Breaks’n’Makes shows off a tiny grand piano model he built based on a design from Mechanistic. It’s fully functional, with keys, hammers, and strings, and it even tiny working casters that it rolls on.

Playing a Water-filled Piano

Playing a Water-filled Piano

“I know this looks bad… but I’m doing it for the sake of science.” Mattias Krantz likes to do some crazy and borderline sacrilegious stuff to pianos. In this clip, he took an old piano, waterproofed it, then filled it with bucket after bucket of water to see what it would sound like when its strings and soundboard were submerged.

One-Day Piano Build

One-Day Piano Build

Musician Rob Scallon has been working on a series of DIY instruments that can be assembled quickly and inexpensively. For this build, he and his buddy Simon created a makeshift piano in less than a day, using a bunch of spare guitar strings, tuning pegs, door stoppers, and other bits and pieces from the Home Depot.

Electric Piano Wire Instrument

Electric Piano Wire Instrument

Inventor and musician Nicolas Bras continues to expand his collection of unconventional musical instruments with a gizmo that looks like a guitar had a chunk taken out of it. Nic assembled a pair of bass guitar pickups and eight lengths of piano wire on a wooden block, resulting in a wonderfully weird and unique sound.

Cheap vs. Expensive Pianos 3

Cheap vs. Expensive Pianos 3

Vineteiro follows up on his comparison of inexpensive vs. fancy-pants pianos with another round of very different musical instruments. After the jump from the $40 hunk of junk to the $600 used upright, the shades of grey become fuzzier and fuzzier to our untrained ears.

A Very Long Piano

A Very Long Piano

Piano builder Adrian Alexander Mann created this elongated piano, which measures 18 feet, 9 inches long and weighs over a ton. It has the longest bass strings of any piano, resulting in deeper harmonics and a richer overall tone without affecting pitch. Listen as musician Hyperion Knight performs on the impressive instrument.

The Detachable Rag

The Detachable Rag

The Pocket Piano is a modular music-making system that lets you carry an entire 88-key piano in your backpack. Musician Jordan Rudess and his pal Maddi had a little fun with the magnetic keyboard modules by gradually removing octaves in the middle of a performance.

50 Pianos, 1 Song

50 Pianos, 1 Song

To celebrate his 500,000th YouTube subscriber, musician PACIL created this lighthearted video in which he plays 50 different instruments, most of which could be considered a piano of some sort. He even included a Keytar, and a couple of those piano mats like the one Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia stomped on in Big.

Piano with Real Hammers

Piano with Real Hammers

Those little felt-covered things that strike the strings in piano are known as hammers, but they definitely couldn’t drive a nail. Musician Mattias Krantz wanted to see what would happen if he replaced all 88 of the piano hammers with real metal hand tools. The resulting sound is surprisingly pleasant and melodic.

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