A sound synthesizer (often abbreviated as "synthesizer" or "synth", also spelled "synthesiser" or can also be spelled (Synthesizered) ) is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals converted to sound through loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate other instruments or generate new timbres. They are often played with a keyboard, but they can be controlled via a variety of other input devices, including music sequencers, instrument controllers, fingerboards, guitar synthesizers, wind controllers, and electronic drums. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are often called sound modules, and are controlled via MIDI or CV/Gate.
The piano (an abbreviation of pianoforte) is a musical instrument played using a keyboard.[1] It is widely employed in classical and jazz music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.
An acoustic piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, and a row of 88 black and white keys (52 white, 36 black). The strings are sounded when the keys are pressed, and silenced when the keys are released. The note can be sustained, even when the keys are released, by the use of pedals.
Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike strings. The hammer rebounds, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency.[2] These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones. With technological advances, electric, electronic, and digital pianos have also been developed.
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.
"Harpsichord" designates the whole family of similar plucked keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet.
The harpsichord was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music. During the late 18th century, it gradually disappeared from the musical scene with the rise of the piano. But in the 20th century, it made a resurgence, being used in historically informed performances of older music, in new (contemporary) compositions, and in popular culture.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called wind) through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch and loudness that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
A pipe organ has one or more keyboards (called manuals) played by the hands, and a pedalboard played by the feet, each of which has its own group of stops. The keyboard(s), pedalboard, and stops are housed in the organ's console. The organ's continuous supply of wind allows it to sustain notes for as long as the corresponding keys are depressed, unlike the piano and harpsichord whose sound begins to decay immediately after attack. The smallest portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual; the largest may have over 20,000 pipes and seven manuals.[2] A list of some of the most notable and largest pipe organs in the world can be viewed at List of pipe organs.
The origins of the pipe organ can be traced back to the water organ in Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC,[3] in which the wind supply was created with water pressure. By the 6th or 7th century AD, bellows were used to supply organs with wind.[3] Beginning in the 12th century, the organ began to evolve into a complex instrument capable of producing different timbres. A pipe organ with "great leaden pipes" was sent to the West by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V as a gift to Pepin the Short King of the Franks in 757. Pepin's son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, beginning its establishment in Western church music.[4] By the 17th century, most of the sounds available on the modern classical organ had been developed.[5] From that time, the pipe organ was the most complex man-made device,[6] a distinction it retained until it was displaced by the telephone exchange in the late 19th century.[7]