Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning. A typical piano has 88 keys spanning just over seven octaves. There are other, smaller keyboards or synthesizers that have fewer keys – most ...

Before the piano was invented, composers wrote a lot of music for the harpsichord, which has just 60 keys. This meant that everything they wrote was limited to the harpsichord’s five-octave range. But ...

A typical contemporary piano has 88 keys that span seven and a half octaves. The steel strings are stretched tightly over the instrument’s frame to produce powerful, resonant sounds even when ...