sampling

You are currently browsing articles tagged sampling.

REGISTERED PIANO STEINWAY SERIAL#

October 29, 2008

REGISTERED PIANO STEINWAY SERIAL NUMBER -STEINWAY-REGISTERED

The purchase of a Steinway-designed piano is an investment in music and an artistic musical instrument that requires general care and maintenance to ensure that it will perform to its designed specifications. To protect this valuable instrument it is important to ensure that you and your sales representative have completed, during the purchasing process, the owner’s registration card that is attached to the piano. If this has not been done, please contact your Steinway representative or seek help from a registered professional tuner/technician so that they can register you and your piano with the factory and facilitate your Owner’s/Warranty Certificate. If you are unsure whether your piano has been registered you can simply contact your local Steinway dealer representative or call Steinway & Sons factory at 718-721-2600 and ask for the owner’s registration department. A customer service representative will be happy to assist you with any questions you may have. Be sure to have your piano serial number available. The serial number can be found on the cast iron plate when you open the front top of the lid on a grand piano or the lid top on a vertical piano.

registered Steinway serial # location – grand (courtesy of Steinway & Sons)

registered Steinway serial # location – upright (courtesy of Steinway & Sons)

When Steinway & Sons receives your owner registration information from your Steinway representative for any Steinway-designed pianos you can expect the following:

Your piano and owner’s information is now registered in the Serial Number data log files. This speeds the process to take care of any issues that might arise during your warranty period.

After you and your piano are registered in the Serial Number database, your hard-copy owner/warranty document including a welcome letter will be sent to you via mail. This ensures documentation of your piano with Steinway & Sons.

When you purchase a Boston or Essex piano, a package is included with the instrument that contains the owner registration card

After your owner’s registration has been submitted to either the Boston or Essex Piano Company you will receive via mail your warranty certificate under your name, a “Welcome to Our Family” letter, and a owner’s survey form with a postage-paid return address.

You will also receive under separate cover either the Boston or Essex newsletter highlighting special events and stories.

When you purchase a Steinway piano and after the factory receives your owner registration you can expect to receive your owner’s warranty, a letter from the president, a “Welcome to the Family” maintenance / service booklet, and a survey form with a postage-paid return envelope.

All Steinway, Boston and Essex owners will also receive under separate cover the highly acclaimed Steinway Magazine which is sent only to Steinway, Boston and Essex piano owners. In this magazine you will see featured articles about Steinway & Sons and other music and music-related themes. A sample cover is shown below.

Steinway & Sons and your Steinway representative want to ensure that your piano provides you with years of joy and pleasure. Steinway is ready to assist should you have any questions or concerns.

from http://www.steinway.com/protect-your-investment/

How to buy a Steinway on line

How does the centuries-honed sophistication in design enter the new world of online shopping? Imagine going to Steinway.com and adding a piano to your cart. It may take awhile. The idiosyncrasies of the grand and baby grand pianos keep their sales transactions offline. Personal touch is key.

“Every piano sounds different to every player,” Mr. Spellman said. “So far the Web site has merely an educational tool that gives viewers information and helps with our branding. But the new search function is very helpful from a sales point of view. It helps connect possible buyers to dealers in their area.”

For example, a buyer in rural Illinois can be given information about the Steinway models that the Chicago dealer has in stock. Each city has only one dealer so as to avoid cannibalization.

In recent years the firm has added two lines of upright pianos, the Boston and the Essex, which are sold at a lower price point and made overseas in Japan and China.

Also available online is information on other piano models, technical specs, showroom details, a dealer locator, artists performing on Steinway instruments, competitions, music and interviews and even a link to Apple’s iTunes online music store.

In the future it may be possible for consumers to add a Boston Steinway to the shopping cart at Steinway.com. And the site may be used as a revenue source by selling tickets to concerts and performances for classical and popular music. The new strategy would promote concerts and festivals to the Steinway audience.

For a piano maker whose endorsements through the years include Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Gustav Mahler, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington, it seems a natural vehicle for music in the 21st century.

But the past matters as much to Steinway as the present, even in marketing. Consider the contest organized in 2003 for the company’s 150th anniversary. The goal was to find the oldest Steinway.

“A pair of little old ladies in Texas had the oldest one, from around the time that the factory opened in New York,” Mr. Spellman said. “The prize for the winning piano was a free restoration. Besides a little tuning, there was nothing we could do. The piano was in perfect condition.”

From the July 24, 2006 Issue of DMNews

STRETCH

August 31, 2008

Stretch

Matching The Verituner ‘Box’ To The Piano

A simple method to pre-test and adjust your Verituner to the piano presented in a short presentation, in Chicago land by Dr Woodwind

If you’re an electronic tuner how do you know that the electronic tuning you have calculated fits the piano in front of you?

Let’s consider for a moment how we tune a unison. Pick any note here in the middle we are going to mute off one string till we are satisfied with it. Pick the next string,we may go over we may go below and we try to find the best place for that unison.

I’m going to apologize for competing with the percussionists today, this is like practice room row!

We’re going to look at tuning octaves the same way we tune a unison, so the idea is you go ahead however your machine asks you to do it calculate the tuner to the best of your ability, taking your samples, we are gonna tune A4 of course. Now we have muted off so we only have one string to clear the string you can set that string as best you can allow that string will let you tune in it on the piano in front of you and then lets go down and see A3 where the machine wants us to set A3 which will be our temperment octave, again tune that as well as you can, and then just play it as you can, and just play it as an octave.

That’s pretty good but let’s see if we can do a little better. I want you to just treat that as a unison we are gonna go a little lower and then a little higher and try to find the pocket.

So we’re not gonna worry about 4/2 octave or 6/3 octave 2/1 octave just how does it sound the best place where it sounds this is about the best I can make it.

So now we are using the Verituner as a bookmark now. You notice that I have my ear has told me, one, two, three cents sharper that what the machine says.

What you need to do is understand your own machine well enough to know how to change the tuning parameters.

Um, these are

stretch parameters

style parameters

OTS parameters

these are different things you can do to alter the tuning on your Verituner you match what the tuning is on your ear. Now on the Verituner I’ve gotta go find a different style that will match, more closely. I have them all numbered so seven is a fairly wide styleI need to go up closer, um, to find something closer that might work for this piano and once you have pianos under your belt you’ll know before hand you know if I see a Baldwin upright I know what style to pick that will work for it.

And again A4 just double check it, that’s good. Drop down to A3, and there we go we are right on the money. Go ahead and go down to A2, tune it the way the machine says, and drop down the octave and then check it, thats got a roll to it, don’t really like that either (more tuning) that’s a little better. We need to go a little flater, we need to find a style that will have a little lower section in that part of the piano, there we go and then just work your way, as far as you feel comfortable as far as you (pause, more tuning)

So basically what we are doing is setting up bookmarks, setting up a roadmap for the machine to fit the tuning in between, because if you give it endpoints it can calculate in between fairly well. And then it’s up to you to find out how to manipulate your own machine. There are forums on line that can help you, you can ask questions on line of people how to set that.

But, the key concept here is to know you can tune a unison and tune two strings together simply by ear with no checks, you can also do two strings an octave apart by ear, double check with the double octave or triple octave as you work your way up to find the pocket so you can build a good ladder an appropriate ladder for this particular instrument

If you really want to get picky you may check Eb which is half way between the A’s, and also check some of those.

Again it is a trade off between how much time you want to spend before you actually start tuning the piano.

Hopefully this will help you, this approach as you work with it, will help you shorten the tune time so that you don’t have the entire piano tuned and then say well- I need to change this, I need to change that, I need to change that.

It should start you off with a tuning that should at least fit your A’s and that everything in between should be a lot closer than if you just picked an average tuning or the default tuning that comes with the box

(starts tuning again)

end

SOFTWARE PIANOS

April 30, 2008

SOFTWARE

SOFTWARE PIANOS

Not sure about a real piano, the time is right to concider a sampled piano and choices abound! Practically speaking a real piano isn’t always ‘practical’. If you seem to have more computer space than the room for a good sized piano take heart as a guide herein tells all. TruePianos offers up a three piano package for a multi-core or Power PC G5 Mac, simple interface of presets for each module sonic adjustment as well as tuning adjustment. The sound is ‘dry’ with no room acoustics. 40 day demo is available on

Service Galaxy ll an upgrade from Galaxy Steinway,

offers up a Steinway D Bösendorfer Imperial 290

and a Blüthner 150.Multisampled and miked for

surround and stereo is a treat.Strong at jazz classic or pop and smooth up seven octaves

I have previously covered the Blüthner Digital model one earlier

Native Instruments Akoustic Piano provide a Steinway D a Bechstein D 280, a Bösendorfer 290 and a Steigräver 130. 10 velocity levels on each note and tuning available (cool

Pianoteq v2.2 is not sample based but modeled.As modeled hammers resonance sustain stacato and a host of other variables as well as size.Very good considering its nor sampled. 45 day demo

Sampletekk is 24bit multisampled fair in a library format all listed on their website include 7CG Yamaha, Black Grand-Steinway D, PMI Bösendorfer 290, PMI Estonia 9 ft, Pmi Hybrid, Pmi Old Lady 1923 D, Pmi Steinway D Pmi The Emperor Bösendorfer 290, PMI Yamaha C7, SG88 MKll,The Big One Yamaha C7 and White Grand 9 Ft Malmsjö Concert Grand

Steinberg The Grand 2 are a dry mix of two large well known pianos in anechoic chamber (I can still hear Dr Wright on that one) I would like to present this in a future post Synthology Ivory 9ft D Börsendorfer 290 Yamaha C7 all with 10 velocity levels Vienna Symphonic Library Börsendorfer 290 multisampled 7 velocities quite possibly the best in its class