THE TOY PIANO deMYSTIFIED

mlt

An excerpt from Margaret Leng Tan’s article, TOY PIANOS No Longer Toys!, which appeared in Experimental Musical Instruments, September 1998. Used with permission from the author.THE TOY PIANO deMYSTIFIEDThe mechanism for the original Schoenhut toy piano consisted of a series of flat, gradated steel sounding-plates held together by twine. These were struck by wooden mallets, actually round pegs which were attached to and activated by adult-width wooden keys. This produced a chime-like timbre. The modern Schoenhut toy piano has plastic keys and plastic diamond-shaped hammers. The five-eighth-inch wide sounding plates have been superseded by circular rods one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, made from cold-rolled, high-carbon steel. These strong but flexible rods are reamed to encourage maximum vibration and optimum resonance before insertion into a rectangular base beam.Paralleling the modern piano's relationship to the fortepiano, the sound of the modern toy piano is more percussive than that of the early models or that of a celeste (which can aptly be described as a toy piano on valium). If anything, its penetrating voice is most akin to that of the gamelan family which accounts for its Asian sensibility to some ears.Like real pianos, toy pianos vary greatly in personality determined less by the casing materials than by the quality of the rods. Some instruments are mellow, others more light and silvery; some are full-bodied while others are tinny or brittle-sounding. In fact, I find more timbral variation between two Schoenhuts than between two Steinways!A lingering haze of overtones is a defining feature of the toy piano sound; the actual notes die off almost immediately after they are struck. Every toy piano is unique because each individual set of rods has its own inimitable potpourri of overtones. The overtones of a toy piano are omnipresent and capriciously complex. While the fundamental pitches should ideally be in tune, it is the melding of these mysterious overtones that gives the toy piano its off-key poignancy and ineffable magic…..a magic which my novelist friend John David Morley calls, "Sound combed from the keys of a 'starway' ascending faintly into sleep”.Margaret Leng Tan