# Eleven hammers, and the angles are the whole chord

> A row of eleven piano hammers drawn mid-strike at eleven different angles reads as a chord rather than a diagram, and the felt is the part doing the actual work.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/piano-hammer-row

Eleven hammers in a row, seen from the side. Solid felt heads, thin shanks behind them. No two are
at quite the same angle — some further back, some already through the strike.

Eleven separate hits, drawn at once, and together they read as one chord.

## What is this shirt actually showing?

A cross-section of a piano action: eleven hammers, each belonging to a different note, caught at
different points in the strike.

Inside a real piano the hammers sit in a row like this behind the keybed, one to a string or string
group, and every one of them moves independently the instant its key is pressed. Drawing eleven of
them at eleven angles is the only honest way to show more than one note happening, because a piano
struck once only ever moves one hammer.

## Why does the staggering read as a chord instead of a diagram?

Because a chord is several notes at once, and eleven hammers at eleven different points in their
swing is the visual equivalent of that — several separate events shown in the same frame.

Line them up at identical angles and the drawing reads as a specification: one hammer, repeated
eleven times, a catalogue entry. Stagger the angles and it reads as a moment: eleven things
happening together, which is what a chord actually is and what a row of identical hammers can never
show.

## What actually makes a piano's tone the tone it has?

The felt, not the wood or the wire.

The wood of the hammer shank and the steel of the strings are close to identical from one piano to
the next; what a technician spends hours adjusting is the density of the felt itself, needled soft
in places and hardened in others until the string is struck with exactly the right amount of give.
That process is called voicing, and it happens to the one part of the mechanism this print draws as
a solid mass rather than a thin line — which is the correct emphasis, because it's the part doing
the actual work.

## Can a real piano maker's design go on a shirt like this one?

A maker's own action design, hammer shape or badge belongs to them, and licensable the ordinary way
if a specific instrument is the point of the print.

The mechanism itself — a felt-covered hammer on a shank, striking a string when a key is pressed —
belongs to nobody, because it's a description of how a piano works rather than one maker's
particular version of it. This row carries no maker's mark for the same reason the felt is drawn
generic: the argument is about the mechanism, not about whose piano it came from.

## Does this idea work for other keyboard or percussion instruments?

Anything where a struck or plucked mechanism sits behind a row of controls a player never actually
sees has the same picture available to it.

[A hi-hat drawn closed and open](/stories/hi-hat-closed-and-open) makes a related point about
a hidden mechanism, though the comparison there is between two states of one object rather than
eleven instances of the same one. [A metronome's pendulum drawn at three
positions](/stories/metronome-pendulum-arc) is the same trick again — the only way to draw
motion is to draw it more than once.

## Isn't drawing eleven near-identical hammers repetitive?

The repetition is what makes it readable as a chord rather than as a portrait of one hammer.

A single hammer, however carefully drawn, is a diagram of a part. Eleven of them, staggered, stop
being a diagram of a part and become a picture of the instrument doing something — which is the
difference between drawing a piano's anatomy and drawing a piano being played.

## Does it print well?

Yes — a horizontal row of repeated solid shapes with thin connecting lines holds up well at chest
size.

Charcoal for the shanks keeps them as a connecting rhythm rather than a competing subject, with the
red reserved for the felt heads so the eye reads eleven distinct hits rather than one long shape.
Bone as a ground keeps both inks legible without a third colour needed to separate them.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the row at [JustOG](/) — how many hammers, how staggered the angles, and which colour
carries the felt. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and
it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Eleven hammers mid-swing, and not one of them is drawn at rest.