I believe this is just a concept, not actually prototyped yet (not sure) - here is the Ravenchord piano, a totally new way to construct the innards of a piano - https://www.whipsaw.com/work/ravenchord-piano
It would use solenoids to transmit the key presses to the hammers. While I was pondering that, I wondered if a self-tuning piano could be made, whereby actuators could re-tension the strings. When in tuning mode, the 88 actuators and sensors in turn detect the frequency of the string and then adjust it.
I hope it sounds better than their noisy video. It’s still just an upright laid over. Strings too short to sound “grand” and the idea of solenoids instead of direct touch doesn’t do anything for me.
As for self-tuning, I could see that using strong motors. Still, gonna need over 200 of them. Would be pricey. There are many more than 88 strings in even a spinet piano. Bass section has one or two per note, the rest of the piano 3 strings per note.
At some point, just buy a good digital with hammer action instead of trying to do all this.
Ah, you are correct. I forgot the multiple strings thing. Of course digitals do these tuning adjustments so easily, like just temperaments and A=432 hz
There was this self-tuning piano; is that what you are remembering? The only digital component is the computer that does the tuning (by heating the strings); it is not a “digital piano”.
No idea whether he ever sold any, but apparently he is still around enough to have appeared in a Youtube interview in 2023.
Some startup is, apparently, trying a totally new way to construct the innards of a piano: remove all the strings and hammers, attach transducers to the soundboard, and compute (a current high-end GPU should be sufficient) the inputs required for a desired response. So it can sound like a grand piano, sound like something weird if desired, and the principle should apply equally to Ravenchord or really any kind of design.
It is not a synthesizer, and does not work like a synthesizer, at least in the classical sense. Transducers are clamped to the soundboard at, let’s say, six or so points and are actuated to excite the desired vibrational modes (there is a numerical simulation running to compute all of this). So it, ideally, sounds exactly as though there are hammers and strings in play, except there aren’t any.
I grant one could argue it is a form of digital synthesis, with a piano soundboard as output instead of an array of regular speakers. Certainly you could virtualize the whole thing and then you have some form of digital grand piano synth. I believe what the designers are going for (at least for now?) is a “stringless piano”, though.