This essay accompanies an audio episode from iServalan and forms part of a wider approach to learning music through listening, movement, and attention.
🎹 The Piano: Naming the Structure, Entering the Architecture
Before we talk about repertoire,
before we talk about grades,
before we talk about whether the piano is a “beginner’s instrument” —
we meet it properly.
Because the piano is not something you hold.
It is something you enter.
And to enter it with confidence,
we need shared language.
Not memorised.
Not examined.
Simply known.
So when I name something,
you know where we are.
The Body of the Piano
Let’s begin at the point of contact.
The keyboard.
A row of keys — black and white —
balanced levers rather than buttons.
Each key is a length of wood, weighted and hinged,
designed to travel down and return up with consistency.
Beneath the keys is the keybed,
the foundation that holds the keyboard steady,
allowing repetition, reliability, trust.
When a key is pressed, it sets a mechanism in motion —
the action.
This is the heart of the piano.
The action is a system of joints, levers, and felt,
translating finger movement into sound
with astonishing precision.
The hammers sit at the far end of this system,
felt-covered and carefully shaped,
striking the strings and immediately rebounding.
They do not stay on the string.
They touch and release.
The strings themselves are stretched across a heavy metal frame,
grouped in twos and threes for most notes,
thicker and fewer in the bass,
thinner and more numerous as the pitch rises.
These strings rest on bridges,
which transfer vibration into the soundboard.
The soundboard is the piano’s voice.
A broad, resonant wooden surface
that takes the small vibration of strings
and turns it into something that fills a room.
Above all of this sits the lid,
which can be closed, opened partway, or fully raised,
not to make the piano louder,
but to shape how the sound travels outward.
Below, at the feet, are the pedals.
The sustain pedal allows sound to continue after the keys are released.
The soft pedal shifts the action to change colour and weight.
The middle pedal, where present, selectively holds sound.
You don’t need to remember all of this at once.
You only need to recognise that this is not a simple instrument.
It is a contained architecture of time, weight, and resonance.
Sitting at the Piano
The piano does not ask you to wrap yourself around it.
It asks you to arrive.
Your bench should allow your feet to rest fully on the floor.
Your thighs should slope gently downward.
Your spine is upright but unforced.
You are not leaning into the keyboard.
You are meeting it.
Your arms hang from your shoulders.
Your hands are carried, not held.
This is not an instrument for gripping.
It is an instrument for balance.
Taking Up Space: The Horizontal Orb
Unlike string instruments,
the piano opens sideways.
Imagine an orb around you —
wide now,
stretching from left to right.
Your shoulders belong to this orb.
Your elbows.
Your forearms.
The arc your hands travel across the keyboard.
Nothing should feel cramped.
Nothing should feel hurried.
The piano does not reward collapse.
It rewards presence across width.
If you shrink inward,
the sound narrows.
So you allow yourself space.
Quietly.
Without performance.
Without apology.
You are allowed to sit here.
What Comes Next
Now — and only now —
do we have what we need.
Not scales.
Not pieces.
But orientation.
A named structure.
A balanced seat.
An architecture entered with calm.
Now we can make a sound.
And when that sound arrives,
it arrives supported.
©2025 Sarnia de la Mare