Crossbar

“ In several styles there are two or even more crossbars. These crossbars serve not only to divide the main sections of boxes, but they also act as strong braces to which the bottoms are fastened, giving greater rigidity to the entire case.
The bottom of the case is fitted into a groove made in the outside frame, [Pg 14] so that it cannot be easily separated. This groove being slightly higher than the lower face of the side frame, upon which the case slides back and forth in the rack, keeps the bottom up far enough to allow it to pass clear of the runs, or of any case or shelf below. ”

“ When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it, and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes it strong. ”

“ The crosspiece at the end should be about three inches, and also the two crossbars. Fasten the sides to the end about the middle of the latter, so that a piece projects below the sides wide [99] enough to support the wheels—these should be made of a reel cut in half and fastened on with a large-headed nail. Smooth all down with coarse sandpaper.
A CRANE Materials Required:—
A wooden sweet box, three large reels, one small one, tacks, upholstery nails, string, mucilage, a fret saw, a large coat hook. ”

“ At the feet of the Ys will be seen the nuts, one above and one below the end of the cross bar, which may be turned, thus raising or lowering the end of the tube and adjusting the line of sight to the line of level. The circle C is graduated to 10° and the pointer marked to degrees, so that the instrument may be used in laying off angles, squaring foundations, &c. The pointer is movable and can be fixed in position by the set screw shown in the cut just below the cross bar. The cross bar carries the glass bubble which is seen in the cut. The bubble itself may be adjusted by the screws. ”

“ Experiments and observations show that wires are of practically no12 benefit, and sounding boards can be used only in special cases. Wires stretched in a room scarcely affect the sound, since they present too small a surface to disturb the waves. They have much the same effect on sound waves that a fish line in the water has on water waves. The idea has, perhaps, grown into prominence because of the action of a piano in responding to the notes of a singer. The piano has every advantage over a wire in an auditorium. ”

“ The strings, of finely drawn brass, steel or iron wire, were stretched almost parallel with the keyboard over the narrow belly or soundboard resting on the soundboard bridges, often three in number, and wound as in the piano round wrest or tuning pins set in a block at the right-hand side of the soundboard and attached at the other end to hitch pins. The bridges served to direct the course of the strings and to conduct the sound waves to the soundboard. The scaling, or division of the strings determining their vibrating length, was effected by the position of the tangents. ”

“ For a sign-board an idea is suggested in Fig. 26. At one’s place of business, in front of a cottage, or on a mile-post, it may be displayed to good advantage.
It is only a board on which sheet-iron or lead letters have been fastened, and the edges bound with metal and large-headed nails. A rod set at right angles to a post supports the sign-board, and to ornament it some scroll-work is attached at the top. Scroll ornaments decorate the sides and bottom of the board. These are fastened on with steel-wire nails driven through holes made in the metal and into [99] the edges of the board. ”

“ The player holds a cross bar between the two lengths of the instrument, which enables him to lengthen or shorten the slide at pleasure, and in the bass trombone, as the stretch would be too great for the length of a man's arm, a jointed handle is attached to the cross bar. The player has seven positions, each a semitone apart for elongation, and each note has its own system of harmonics, but in practice he only occasionally goes beyond the fifth. ”

“ The Signor seized the screen and opened it wide and turned it around and closed it and turned it again.
“You seea?” he demanded. “There is nothing that deceive! Now, then, I placea da screen so!” He folded it around the boy and the chair, leaving only the side away from the audience uncovered. 162 He drew away the width of the platform, and, “Music, ifa you please,” he requested. The orchestra, whose members had moved their chairs to one side, struck up a merry tune, and the Signor, folding his arms, bent a rapt gaze on the blank, impenetrable blackness of the screen. ”

“ To the top of each finger-guide was attached a stout brass wire with regulating screw, which pressing against the outside of the wrist, kept the hand in its proper position with regard to the arm. In addition, there was a board ruled with bass and treble staves, called the gamut board, to be placed on the music-desk, on which each note throughout the entire compass of the instrument was found written precisely above its corresponding key. ”

“ The stops, pedals, and couplers also employ "power." Not only are the performer's muscles spared a lot of heavy work when compressed air and electricity aid him, but he is able to have the console, or keyboard, far away from the pipes. "From the console, the player, sitting with the singers, or in any desirable part of the choir or chancel, would be able to command the working of the whole of the largest organ situated afar at the western end of the nave; would draw each stop in complete reliance on the sliders and the sound-board fulfilling their office ”

“ The performer now places the bar to the extreme points of his fingers, and holds his arm in a horizontal position, when the bar is again seen suspended without any support in that most difficult position.
To prove that this wonderful performance is done without the aid of invisible silk, wire, wax, or mechanism, the operator places the bar against the back of his hand, and once more it is seen suspended in mid-air, while he takes it quite close to the company for inspection. Price, $2. ”

“ It seemed to me that in this way a number of distinct telegraph messages might be sent simultaneously from the tuning-fork piano to the other end of the circuit, by operators each manipulating a different key of the instrument. These messages would be read by operators stationed at the distant piano, each receiving operator listening for signals of a certain definite pitch, and ignoring all others. In this way could be accomplished the simultaneous transmission of a number of telegraphic messages along a single wire, the number being limited only by the delicacy of the listener’s ear. ”

“ Backed up by a bass player and a percussionist, the smooth, sophisticated Short sits behind the keyboard in a tuxedo, performing popular songs from the early 20th century to the present day. Every word and every note comes out a finely polished jewel, leaving the audience with the impression that they have never heard the song before. ”

“ Beneath each wire is a small felt hammer connected with the keys in such a way that when a key is pressed, a string is struck by a hammer and is thrown into vibration, thereby producing a tone.
If we press the lowest key, that is, the key giving forth the lowest pitch, we see that the longest wire is struck and set into vibration; if we press the highest key, that is, the key giving the highest pitch, we see that the shortest wire is struck. ”

“ At the top of each leg is a richly engraved band of brass, and rosette, to conceal the place where the pin held the leg to the instrument. The drawer knobs were doubtless brass also, for these are not the original ones. The panel above the keyboard is beautifully painted in metallic lustre, and has two carved panels besides, over velvet. The legs are boldly carved with the acanthus leaf, and everything about the piano is as elegant as possible. By the time these last two instruments were made music had taken a decided advance. Musical societies were organized in all the large cities ”

“ The soundpost, placed underneath the right foot of the bridge (a little way behind it) supports the upper table against the pressure of the strings upon the bridge, and the bass bar serves a similar purpose under the left foot of the bridge. The sound post, by connecting the upper table with the back, sets the entire instrument into vibration, and by its help the sound waves radiate to all parts. ”

“ But if the disk be turned a little, an unperforated portion of the disk comes under the tube, the current of air being then intercepted. As the disk is slowly turned, successive perforations are brought under the tube, and whenever this occurs a puff of air gets through. On rendering the rotation rapid, the puffs succeed each other in very quick succession, producing pulses in the air which blend to a continuous musical note, audible to you all. Mark how the note varies. When the whirling table is turned rapidly the sound is shrill; when its motion is slackened the pitch immediately falls. ”

“ Broadwood to somewhat modify and improve this framing, but with the retention of its leading feature, the diagonal bar, which was found to be of supreme importance in bearing the tension where it is most concentrated. From 1852, his concert grands have had, in all, one bass bar, one diagonal bar, a middle bar with arch beneath, and the treble cheek bar. The middle bar is the only one directly crossing the scale, and breaking it. It is strengthened by feathered ribs, and is fastened by screws to the wooden brace below. ”

“ The action is the same on the voice of the speaker. The sounds he utters are complex and as they reach the walls certain components are reinforced and the quality of the sound is changed. This action of resonance may also be caused by the air in a room. Each room has a definite pitch to which it responds, the smaller the volume of the room the higher being the pitch. A large auditorium would respond to the very low pitch of the bass drum. ”

“ In the small movable (Portative) organs of the middle ages, when the surface of the soundboard, or 'table' on which the pipes stood, was scarcely any higher above the keys than the top of a modern square pianoforte above its clavier, and when the soundboard measured only about a couple of feet in length, the slider-ends could be easily reached by the player, and be moved in or out with the fingers and thumb. When the soundboard became longer, and the sliders longer and heavier, a lever was added, to move them to and fro. This was the arrangement in the 16th-century organ at Radnor. ”

“ Captain Eri, close at the electrician's heels, saw a long room, empty save for a few chairs and a table in the center. Upon this table stood the testing instruments, exactly like those in the receiving room downstairs. Three men lounged in the chairs, and standing beside the table, with his fingers upon the regulating screw at the centerpiece of the recorder, was another, a big fellow, with a round, smooth-shaven face. ”

“ This is a signal to the fly man to get ready to lower the curtain, for the conductor knows the exact bar in the music at which the curtain should descend. At the proper moment the conductor rings again, and the curtain descends. When the men in the fly gallery receive the first signal—that is, the signal to get ready—they turn a switch which lights a colored electric lamp directly over the small prompt desk shown in our engraving, where the stage manager or his assistant takes up his position. ”

“ Shortly after the invention of telegraphy, operators learned that they could read the message by the click of the marker against a metal rod which took the place of the tape. In practically all telegraph offices of the present day the old-fashioned tape is replaced by the sounder, shown in Figure 219. When current flows, a lever, L, is drawn down by the electromagnet and strikes against a solid metal piece with a click; when the current is broken, the lever springs upward, strikes another metal piece and makes a different click. ”

“ In a later investigation6 Sabine showed that the reverberation depended also on the pitch of sound. As a concrete example, the high10 notes of a violin might be less reverberant with a large audience than the lower tones of the bass viol, although both might have the same reverberation in the room with no audience. Again, the voice of a man with notes of low pitch might give satisfactory results in an auditorium while the voice of a woman with higher pitched notes would be unsatisfactory. ”

“ This board takes up the vibrations of the strings; but, unlike the rubber, gives them all out to the air, greatly re-enforcing their strength, and changing somewhat their quality. But the air itself may act in like manner. In almost any room or hall not more than fifteen or twenty feet long, a person can find some tone of the voice that will seem to meet some response from the room. ”

“ Following the pattern of the second and third bars, the first note of bar one has been changed from a dotted crotchet to a dotted quaver and the second note from a quaver to a semi-quaver. Page 113 (Duck Dance) : In the midi file, just the first and the last verses are played. The first five bars represent one verse and are repeated just once followed by the last two bars for which the direction is that they are for the last verse only. In the fifth full bar, the fourth note value is a redundant crotchet rest since there is an uptake bar of one crotchet that this bar should balance. ”