Medieval monks also used the Monochord to set the pitch for their church choirs. It is the real progenitor of the piano – insofar as all succeeding in instruments were improved directly from this – earlier instruments were abandoned. The tone is produced by plucking a string. On it, Pythagoras determined the three Western Scales – Diatonic, Chromatic, and Enharmonic. The bridge was movable according to markings underneath, distinguishing the intervals of the musical scale. It consisted of a single string (the Greeks used catgut) stretched over bridges resting on a sound board. for experiments regarding the mathematical relations of musical sound. This instrument was used by Pythagoras about 582 B.C. by Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, and mathematician. The “KE” was similar to the monochord devised around 550 B.C.
The strings were of silk, each one being made up of 81 finely woven strands, and each group was colored blue, red, yellow, white and black showing that, the Chinese understood the relations of tone to color. It had 5 or 6 movable bridges which determined the pitch of each group of strings. and were called “Ke.” The Ke consisted of a set of 50 strings, strung over a box and was much superior to anything known to the Western world even 4,000 years later. The earliest stringed instruments on record were invented and used by the Chinese as early as 2650 B.C. The most remote recognizable ancestor to the piano is the ancient (2650 B.C.) Chinese instrument called the “KE.” From the lute and lyre family came the guitar, banjo, and violin, which includes the viola, cello and the double bass. All of these instruments belong to the chorda family. Each of these methods caused vibration of the string forming the central mechanical element of separate groups or families of musical instruments such as the harp, lyre, lute and the zither. The piano in its present state of perfection and the story of their development is an interesting one to the musician and the antiquarian alike. These stringed instruments have always held a prominent place in the music of every country. Throughout the ages the stretched string has continued to be one of the major means of generating a musical sound, set in vibration by a bow of hair or gut string plucked by the fingers or hard plectrum, or in some instances, struck with a hammer. The very first stringed instrument was possibly the hunting bow – such bows appear in stone-age cave drawings dating back many thousands of years, and all of our music-making machines today are decedents of those that were used in the remotest ages of antiquity. Men have been picking stringed instruments since the beginning of recorded history, the first instruments used by man which might be called melodious were no doubt stringed instruments.
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