Editing Toy piano (section)

== Characteristics ==
{{unreferenced section|date=January 2025}}

Toy pianos come in many shapes, from scale models of [[Upright piano|upright]] or [[Grand piano|grand]] pianos to toys which only resemble pianos in that they possess keys. Toy pianos are usually no more than 50&nbsp;cm in width, and made out of [[wood]] or [[plastic]]. The first toy pianos were made in the mid-19th century and were typically uprights, although many toy pianos made today are models of grands. Rather than hammers hitting strings as on a standard piano, the toy piano sounds by way of hammers hitting [[metal]] bars or rods which are fixed at one end. The hammers are connected to the keys by a mechanism similar to that which drives [[celesta]]s.

{{listen
|filename=Pop Goes the Weasel on Toy Piano.mp3
|title="Pop Goes the Weasel"
|description="[[Pop Goes the Weasel]]" performed on a toy piano
|pos=left
}}
Toy pianos ostensibly use the same [[musical scale]] as full size pianos, although their tuning in all but the most expensive models is usually very approximate. Similarly, the [[pitch (music)|pitch]] to which they are tuned is rarely close to the standard of 440 [[Hertz|Hz]] for the A above [[middle C]]. A typical toy piano will have a range of one to three [[octave]]s. The cheapest models may not have black keys, or the black keys may be painted on. This means they can play a fixed [[diatonic scale]] (or an approximately tuned version of it), but not the full [[chromatic scale]], or diatonic scales in other [[key (music)|key]]s. Typically, diatonic toy pianos have only eight keys and
can play one octave. Other variants may have non-functioning black keys between every key (which would make it appear to play the [[quarter tone]]s between E/F and B/C), but they either do not play, play the same notes as an adjacent white key, or play a special sound effect. Some toy pianos cost hundreds of dollars.