Grand Pianos

Grand pianos are musical instruments which produce a tone through vibrating strings in the piano’s body. The player presses keys on a keyboard which causes a small felt tipped hammer to strike the sting producing a tone. In grand pianos the mechanism is horizontal, which the stringed being stretched away from the keyboard, due to this grand pianos are typically much larger than the more common upright pianos. However there is some variation in size between grand pianos and they can be roughly categorised into three different sizes. Concert grand pianos are the largest at approximately 3 metres, then there are the smaller ‘parlour grand pianos’ and the even smaller baby grand pianos.

The large grand pianos used for concerts will have a very high quality sound with fewer overtones than can be expected from an upright piano. Grand pianos are typically very expensive, even the smaller examples such as baby grand pianos which are designed for domestic use can cost several thousand pounds, significantly more than upright pianos. Concert grand pianos are even more expensive and it is very unusual to see them being used outside of concert halls, mainly due to the large amount of space required to house them.