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NYMetro EMS
NY Metro Emergency Musical Services
Piano Tuning & Servicing


        To schedule a tuning appointment or a piano appraisal,
        please call Kenneth A. Farnum, Jr.:
        
Home
: (718) 885-2480 / Cell: (917) 805-4699 
       
or e-mail Ken at:  FarnumA440@aol.com


              Tuning, voicing, repairs, regulation and piano moving services are available.
              Standard Tunings (no repairs, parts or regulation) range from $125. to $195.
                               (PLUS: garaged parking and/or tolls)

              depending on location and/or the time of day.
              If the piano is very out of tune, a second tuning in a few weeks to a month
              is highly recommended in order to stabilize the entire pitch of the piano to A= 440 c.p.s.

                                  EMERGENCY TUNINGS: RATES on REQUEST!
                           Standard rates apply to tuning that start between 8:00AM and 9:00PM


 
 



  Some other Piano Tuners & Music Websites:

     Toni Van Loan (H): (914) 965-5110 - www.victorianpiano.com/

     Joe Hanerfeld (800) 648-8637 - www.craftsmanpiano.net
         also, check out: www.craftsmanpiano.net/Craftsman_Piano_Inventory.pdf

     www.pianomart.comhttp://www.pianomart.com/buy-a-piano/piano-ads.php?&type_id=1&manufacturer_id=&gp_min_size=290&gp_max_size=315&zip=10464&radius=10&color_id=&max_price=&submit_admin_adsearch=Search&sort=placed&dir=desc


     USA Piano Adoption - www.pianoadoption.com/states/free_pianos_NY.html

     www.pianoandorgankeys.com/
          Blackstone Valley Piano, part of a consortium of rebuilders, is nationally recognized
          as keyboard restoration and fabrication specialists.
          Services include high quality application of ivory, bone and plastic tops, fronts and sharps.
         Restoration of original ivory, bone and ebony key coverings to like new appearance is also provided.
         They offer extensive and in-depth keystick repair, and if needed, a new keyboard and keyframe can be made.


     
Click here: Piano Forums at Piano World: Let's Talk Pianos... Lots of Pianos...
        www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000040;p=0

     http://www.skylarkpiano.com/articles/a-more-detailed-explaination-of-regulation.php

      some NYS Piano Tuners = www.pianoacoustics.com/piano_tuning_ny.htm


Piano Movers:
    G
eorge (Vianey)
Diaz:   (347) 827-8973 
    <toppianomover@yahoo.com>
         D&B Piano Movers Corp  
        
3051 69th St.     Woodside, NY 11377

       PianoLand movers (in NYC): (718) 376-2415
       2527 65th St, Brooklyn, NY 11204

     www.kunispianomoving.com

     (Piano Rentals) Bondy Piano Sales and Service - www.bondypiano.com/rental.htm

      https://www.take-a-piano-sheet-music-break.com/


    some NYS Piano Movers =   

    www.pianomoversnetwork.com/piano_movers_ny.htm

      PIANO PAGE - Piano Technicians Guild - Everything about Pianos, Tuning, Service, Repair, History, Find a Technicia
     
          http://ptg.org/resources-historyOfPianos.php

long distance movers:
Keyboard Carriage -
(270) 737-5797   
keyboardmotorcycleshipping.com
   
PO Box 625  Elizabethtown, KY 42702




 
from the Vibrationdata Piano Page

PIANO KEYBOARD
The number beside each key is the fundamental frequency in units of cycles per seconds, or Hertz.
OCTAVES
For example, the A4 key has a frequency of 440 Hz.
Note that A5 has a frequency of 880 Hz. The A5 key is thus one octave higher than A4 since it has twice the frequency.
OVERTONES
An overtone is a higher natural frequency for a given string. The overtones are "harmonic" if each occurs at an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency.


Click here: Google Image Result for http://www.vibrationdata.com/Resources/piano_keys.jpg
See All 88 Keyboard Frequencies!
1.  At what point does a noise become a musical tone?
2.  When do a series of tones become a melody?
3.  When do a series of noises become a percussive tone with no pitch?
4.  What is the strongest natural structure for music?
5.  Just as copyrights there are moral rights, who has the moral right to determine what actually is music
6.  How important or unimportant is the tension and release factor in music? 

Other Vibrationdata Pages: Home | Choral & Instrumental MusicSearch



SOUND FILES
10 secs of A = 440 Hz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFOl-9SNxLY
Kawai Piano (not perfectly tuned)
piano_middle_C.mp3
piano_C_sharp.mp3
piano_D.mp3
piano_D_sharp.mp3
piano_E.mp3
piano_F.mp3
piano_F_sharp.mp3
piano_G.mp3
piano_G_sharp.mp3
piano_A.mp3
piano_A_sharp.mp3
piano_B.mp3


Sound Files for Ratios

piano_octave_A_A.mp3
piano_twelfth_A_E.mp3
piano_fifth_A_E.mp3
piano_fourth_A_D.mp3
piano_Major_Third_A_C_sharp.mp3
piano_Major_Sixth_A_F_sharp.mp3




Click Here: out of tune pianos - BEWARE of the SHREDDER!"
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzG7CSYg3U



AN INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC THEORY
By Tom Irvine
Email: tomirvine@aol.com
November 24, 2000
________________________________________________________________________
Historical Background
Pythagoras of Samos was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, who lived from approximately 560 to 480 BC. Pythagoras and his followers believed that all relations could be reduced to numerical relations. This conclusion stemmed from observations in music, mathematics, and astronomy.
Pythagoras studied the sound produced by vibrating strings. He subjected two strings to equal tension. He then divided one string exactly in half. When he plucked each string, he discovered that the shorter string produced a pitch which was one octave higher than the longer string. A one-octave separation occurs when the higher frequency is twice the lower frequency.
German scientist Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) made further contributions to music theory. Helmholtz wrote "On the Sensations of Tone" to establish the scientific basis of musical theory.
Natural Frequencies of Strings
A note played on a string has a fundamental frequency, which is its lowest natural frequency. The note also has overtones at consecutive integer multiples of its fundamental frequency. Plucking a string thus excites a number of tones.
Ratios
The theories of Pythagoras and Helmholtz depend on the frequency ratios shown in Table 1.

 Table 1. Standard Frequency Ratios

 Ratio
 Name
 1:1
 Unison
 1:2
 Octave
 1:3
 Twelfth
 2:3
 Fifth
 3:4
 Fourth
 4:5
 Major Third
 3:5
 Major Sixth
 
These ratios apply both to a fundamental frequency and its overtones, as well as to relationship between separate keys.
Consonance
Now consider two strings which are plucked simultaneously. The degree of harmony depends on how the respective fundamental frequencies and overtones blend together.
Music notes which blend together in a pleasing manner are called consonances. Notes with a displeasing blend are dissonances.
Helmholtz gave a more mathematical definition of these terms:
When two musical tones are sounded at the same time, their united sound is generally disturbed by the beats of the upper partials, so that a greater or less part of the whole mass of sound is broken up into pulses of tone, and the joint effect is rough. This relation is called Dissonance. But there are certain determinant ratios between pitch numbers, for which this rule suffers an exception, and either no beats at all are formed, or at least only such as have so little intensity that they produce no unpleasant disturbances of the united sound. These exceptional cases are called Consonances.
Helmholtz has defined degrees of consonance as shown in Table 2.


 Table 2. Consonances

 Degree
 Interval
 Absolute
Octave, Twelfth, Double Octave 
 Perfect
 Fifth, Fourth
 Medial
major Sixth, major Third 
 Imperfect
minor Sixth, minor Third  
For reference, a glossary of musical terms is given in Appendix A.
Octave
Again, a one-octave separation occurs when the higher frequency is twice the lower frequency. The octave ratio is thus 2:1
A note's first overtone is one octave higher than its fundamental frequency.
Consider a modern piano keyboard. The beginning key on the left end is an A0 note with a fundamental frequency of 27.5 Hz. A piano key has harmonic overtones at integer multiples of its fundamental frequency. Thus, the A0 key also produces a tone at 55.0 Hz, which is one octave higher than the fundamental frequency. The second overtone is at 82.5 Hz.
The twelfth key to the right of A0 is A1, counting both the black and white keys. The A1 note has a fundamental frequency of 55.0 Hz. The A1 note is thus one octave higher than the A0 note, in terms of their respective fundamental frequencies. In fact, there is a one-octave separation between any two piano keys which are twelve keys apart.
A pleasing, harmonious sound is produced when two notes separated by one octave are played simultaneously on a piano or other musical instrument. Helmholtz calls such a pair an absolute consonance. Thus, the A0 and A1 keys are an absolute consonance.
This effect is shown for the A0 note and the A1 note in Table 3.

The overtones of the A1 note thus coincide with the evenly numbered overtones of the A0 note. Again, these two notes are separated by one octave.
Hermann Helmholz wrote:
A note accompanied by its Octave consequently becomes brighter in quality, because the higher upper partial tones on which brightness of quality depends, are partially reinforced by the additional Octave.
Twelfth
A twelfth is two notes which form a frequency ratio of 1:3.
A note's second overtone is a twelfth higher than its fundamental frequency.
Recall the A0 note with its fundamental frequency of 27.5 Hz. Its second overtone is 82.5 Hz, which is three times higher than its fundamental frequency.
Ideally, there would be a key with a fundamental frequency of 82.5 Hz. The nearest is the E2 key which has a fundamental frequency of 82.407 Hz. This frequency approximately meets the goal. Thus, the E2 key is considered as a twelfth higher than A0. A comparison is shown in Table 4.
Thus A0 and E2 have three tones very nearly in common in the frequency domain up to 250 Hz.
Fifth
A fifth is two notes which form a frequency ratio of 2:3.
A note's second overtone is a fifth higher than its first overtone .
Recall the A0 note with its fundamental frequency of 27.5 Hz. A fifth higher would be 41.25 Hz. Such a note does not exist in an exact sense. On the other hand, the E1 note has a frequency of 41.203 Hz, which is approximately equal to the exact fifth. Thus, E1 is considered as a fifth higher than A0. A comparison is shown in Table 5.

Thus, A0 and E1 have two overtones very nearly in common in the frequency domain up to 165 Hz.
Reference
1. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, Dover, 1954.
APPENDIX A
Glossary
Consonance - a simultaneous combination of sounds conventionally regarded as pleasing.
Dissonance - a simultaneous combination of sounds conventionally regarded as lacking harmony.
Harmony - a combination of musical considered to be pleasing.
Harmonic - a tone in the harmonic series of overtones produced by a fundamental tone.
Harmonic Series - a series of tones consisting of a fundamental tone and the overtones produced by it, whose frequencies are at integral multiples of the fundamental frequency.
Interval - the difference in pitch between two musical tones
Octave - the interval of eight diatonic degrees between two tones, one of which has twice the frequency as the other.
Overtone - a harmonic.
Partial - a harmonic.
Pitch - the frequency of a tone.
Reference: American Heritage Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1982.
 



















                    http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/movies/07stein.html




Movie Review

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 (November 7, 2007)




What�s Black and White and Made in Queens?
Published: November 7, 2007

�Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037� follows the painstaking yearlong process of building and fine-tuning a handmade nine-foot concert grand piano in the Steinway company�s factory in Astoria, Queens. A paean to the rewards of old-fashioned craftsmanship in an age of mechanization, the film, directed by Ben Niles, amounts to a de facto infomercial for Steinway & Sons, the 150-year-old company that is the biggest name in the high-end piano business. Steinway produces about 2,000 pianos a year, compared with the approximately 100 a day by other companies, none of whose names are mentioned.

Among the musicians shown testing and selecting pianos are the jazz pianists Marcus Roberts, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Charlap, Kenny Barron and Hank Jones. From the classical side come Lang Lang, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and H�l�ne Grimaud. Their appearances are tantamount to testimonials. The completed L1037 is the piano of Ms. Grimaud�s dreams, and we hear excerpts from her performances of two pieces by Rachmaninoff.

These magnificent instruments do not come cheap. One is shown in the Steinway showroom in New York on West 57th Street with a price tag of $103,400. No wonder a prospective buyer is very particular in choosing a specific piano. Each handmade instrument has its own personality. Some yield brighter sounds, while others have deeper, more muted timbres.

The touch also varies considerably. Mr. Connick, who describes himself as �rather heavy-handed,� prefers �a deep, heavy action,� which means that notes have to be hit harder than average to make a desired sound. �I like the piano to play back a little bit,� he says.

Lang Lang compares the best pianos to great actors for their ability to convey extremes of emotion and attitude. It was the flamboyant pianism in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, he says, that originally drew him to the instrument.

Most agree that the individual sound of a handmade piano, as opposed to one made by machine and tuned by computer, is one of its glories.

�If you do it by computer, it sounds like a synthesizer � like a machine,� observes a factory specialist, known as a rough tuner.

Each concert Steinway consists of 12,000 parts assembled by as many as 450 people. In addition to a rough tuner, some of the craft experts interviewed include a case maker, a plate fitter, a grand finisher, a belly maker, a stringer and a fine tuner. The movie shows them at work, measuring, fitting, sanding and tightening parts. An artisan with an experienced hand and a trained ear can sense the effects of minute adjustments that a machine could never take into account.

As these satisfied workers describe what they do and how their tradition is handed from generation to generation, you sense that it is not about to die anytime soon.

NOTE BY NOTE

The Making of Steinway L1037

Produced and directed by Ben Niles; director of photography, Ben Wolf with Luke Geisbuhler, Mr. Niles and Geoff O�Brien; edited by Purcell Carson and Mr. O�Brien; released by Plow Productions.
Running time: 81 minutes. This film is not rated.

Read All Readers' Reviews �


















      Kenneth A. Farnum, Jr.: (H) (718) 885-2480 / (c): (917) 805-4699 
          
e-mail: FarnumA440@aol.com     /// website: www.NYMetro-EMS.com

also:
 Ms.
Elizabeth Farnum (718) 885-2480 / (c): (646) 391-6505

Elizabeth Farnum's new music site
www.ElizabethFarnumVocalist.com

Elizabeth Farnum's new e-mail address
Elizabeth@ElizabethFarnumVocalist.com