Pianos

Name	Image	Tradition	Description
Barrel Piano		England	A barrel piano (also known as a "roller piano") is a forerunner of the modern player piano. Unlike the pneumatic player piano, the barrel piano was operated by turning a hand crank. Barrel pianos were popular with street musicians, who sought novel instruments that were also highly portable. They are frequently confused with barrel organs, but are quite different instruments. Barrel pianos were first developed in the early 19th century as an attempt to mechanically automate piano music. They never found their way into homes in any significant quantity, instead being favored by street musicians and other entertainers.
Electric Piano		United States	An electric piano is an electric musical instrument whose popularity started in the late 1960s, was at its greatest during the 1970s and still is big today. Many models were designed for home or school use or to replace a (heavy) and un-amplified piano on stage, while others were originally conceived for use in school or college piano labs for the simultaneous tuition of several students using headphones. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electronic signals by pickups.
Fortepiano		Italy	Fortepiano designates the early version of the piano, from its invention by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. Fortepianos have leather-covered hammers and thin, harpsichord-like strings. The tone of the fortepiano is softer and has less sustain than the modern piano. Fortepianos also tend to have quite different tone quality in their different registers. The image shows a fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, ca. 1805.
Grand Piano		Japan	Grand pianos have the frame and strings placed horizontally, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. This makes the grand piano a large instrument, for which the ideal setting is a spacious room with high ceilings for proper resonance. There are several sizes of grand piano. Manufacturers and models vary, but a rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand", (between about 2.2 m to 3 m long) from the "parlor grand" (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller "baby grand" (which may be shorter than it is wide). All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. The image shows the inside of a Yamaha grand piano.
Piano		Italy	The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers. The hammers immediately rebound allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies them. The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument (in a loose sense of that term). According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
Player Piano		United States	The player piano is a piano containing a pneumatic mechanism that plays on the piano action pre-programmed music via perforated paper rolls. The true player piano was designed to be a fully interactive musical experience rather than merely an automatic instrument and hence they are fitted with interactive control levers intended for the "player pianist" or "pianolist" to create a music performance to their own taste.
Rhodes Piano		United States	A Rhodes piano is an electromechanical musical instrument, a brand of electric piano. Its distinctive sound has appeared and still does in thousands of songs of all musical styles since it was first introduced in 1965.
Toy Piano		United States	The toy piano is a musical instrument, made as a child's toy, but which has also been used in more serious musical contexts. The instrument was invented in Philadelphia in 1872 by a German immigrant named Albert Schoenhut. It is often in the form of a scaled down model of a piano, usually no more than 50 cm in width, and made out of wood or plastic. Rather than hammers hitting strings as on a standard piano, the toy piano sounds by way of hammers hitting metal bars or rods which are fixed at one end.
Upright Piano		United States	Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are placed vertically, extending in both directions from the keyboard and hammers. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. The grand piano hammers return by gravity, hence their return will always remain more consistent than the vertical hammers, thus giving pianists better control of their playing. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play smoother than a grand piano that has not been regulated for years, and the very best upright pianos now approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
Walk-on Piano		United States	Inside the FAO Schwarz, a specialty toy retailer based in New York City, there is a 22-foot walk-on piano ($250K). The piano was featured in the 1988 Tom Hanks film Big, in which Hanks and Robert Loggia danced "Heart & Soul" and "Chopsticks" on the store's piano.

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