Grand pianos have the frame and strings placed horizontally, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. This makes the grand piano a large instrument, for which the ideal setting is a spacious room with high ceilings for proper resonance. There are several sizes of grand piano. Manufacturers and models vary, but a rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about 2.2 m to 3 m long) from the "parlor grand" (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller "baby grand" (which may be shorter than it is wide).

A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.

Grand Piano Covers

MORONI, Comoros – A Yemeni jetliner carrying 153 people crashed into the Indian Ocean on Tuesday as it attempted to land amid severe turbulence and howling winds. Officials said a teenage girl was plucked from the sea, the only known survivor.
The crash in waters off this island nation came two years after aviation officials reported equipment faults with the plane, an aging Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a Yemenia airlines flight from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes.
Most of the passengers were from Comoros, a former French colony. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.
Khaled el-Kaei, the head of Yemenia's public relations office, said a 14-year-old girl survived the crash, and Yemen's embassy in Washington issued a statement saying a young girl was taken to a hospital. It also said five bodies were recovered.
Sgt. Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that he rescued the girl after she was found bobbing in the water. She couldn't grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea, Abdilai said. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar.
There were earlier statements from officials that a 5-year-old boy survived. El-Kaei said that was not known and the airline had lost contact with its office in Comoros because of bad weather.
Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said the flight data recorder had not been found and it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. But he said winds in excess of 40 miles per hour were pummeling the plane as it was landing in darkness in the early morning hours Tuesday.
Turbulence was believed to be a factor in the crash, Yemen's embassy in Washington said.
"The weather was very bad," Qader said, adding the windy conditions were hampering rescue efforts.
The Yemenia plane was the second Airbus to crash into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, killing all 228 people on board, as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Mohammed Moqbel, a Yemeni pilot who has flown to the Comoros, said the route can be difficult because of the geography and weather.
"The airport is also very poor in terms of equipment," said Moqbel. "They don't have advanced radars to guide planes."
The tragedy — and dwindling hopes that anyone else made it out alive — prompted an outcry in the Comoros, where residents complained of a lack of seat belts on Yemenia flights and planes so overcrowded that passengers had to stand in the aisles.
The Comoros, a former French colony of 700,000 people, is an archipelago of three main islands situated 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.
Gen. Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, the senior commander for French forces in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep waters about nine miles north of the Comoran coast and 21 miles from the Moroni airport. Searchers encountered an oil slick at the site, the Yemeni Embassy statement said.
French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" in the plane's equipment during a 2007 inspection, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said on France's i-Tele television Tuesday. He did not elaborate
In Brussels, European Union Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the airline had previously met EU safety checks and was not on their blacklist. But he said a full investigation was being launched amid questions about why the passengers — who originated in Paris — were transferred on another jet in the Yemeni capital of San'a.
An Airbus statement said the plane that crashed went into service 19 years ago, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999. Airbus said it was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros.

The A310-300 is a twin-engine widebody jet that can seat up to 220 passengers. There are 214 A310s in service worldwide, with 41 operators.

A crisis center was set up at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Many passengers were from the French city of Marseille, home to around 80,000 immigrant Comorans, more even than Comoros' capital of Moroni.

Yemenia has long been a target of criticism for the poor condition of its passenger cabins, with recent passenger complaints about missing or faulty seat belts.

Still, analysts have cautioned against equating the condition of the passenger cabin on any airline with the aircraft's maintenance records.

Yemenia airways has a solid safety record. In 2008 it passed the International Airline Transport Association's operational safety audit, a rigorous set of inspections considered an indication of high quality for any airline.

One problem that does crop up with older aircraft, particularly when a certain model has been discontinued, is the issue of fake replacement parts, experts said.

Airline companies sometimes unwittingly purchase fake parts, which are then put into aircraft by their maintenance crews. Despite rigorous international efforts to root out counterfeit spares in the past decade, they are still believed to be in circulation.

"Pirate spare parts remain a big maintenance problem in aviation," said Capt. Harry Eggerschwiler, chief of operations for the African Civil Aviation Authority. "This is true everywhere in the world and not just in (developing) countries."

Some French Comorans insisted their complaints about the airline's safety weren't heeded by authorities.

Zalifa Youssouf, a member of SOS Voyages, which seeks to improve passenger conditions and safety, told France's i-Tele television that the Comoran community had complained about the flight from San'a to Comoros.

She said the planes were dirty, frequently did not have safety belts and that flight attendants often did not speak French, just Arabic which passengers did not understand. "We felt we were in danger," Youssouf said.

Mohamed Ali, a Comoran who went to Yemenia's headquarters in Paris to try to get more information about the doomed flight, said complaints about safety went unheeded. "Some people stand the whole way to Moroni," he said.

In France, school vacations began this week and many on the plane were heading home to visit.

Christophe Prazuck, French military spokesman, said a patrol boat and reconnaissance ship were sent to the crash site as well as a military transport plane. The French were sending divers as well as medical personnel, he said.

Yemenia airline officials said the 11-member crew was made up of six Yemenis, including the pilot, two Moroccans, an Indonesian, an Ethiopian and a Filipino.

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Al-Haj contributed to this report from San'a, Yemen. Associated Press writers Deborah Seward, Angela Charlton and Greg Keller in Paris, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Yoann Guilloux in Saint-Denis de la Reunion, Reunion Island, contributed to this report.

HOUSTON – The Houston Rockets are keeping quiet about Yao Ming, one day after the team doctor said his broken left foot could potentially threaten his career.
While Yao seeks other medical opinions, the Rockets are preparing for the NBA's free-agent period that begins Wednesday.
General manager Daryl Morey said Monday he would not comment on the reports about Yao "until we have all the facts." A team spokesman said Tuesday that nothing was definitive and that Yao and his representatives were seeking other medical opinions.
Yao's agent, John Huizinga, did not return repeated messages.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to create a new agency to police the fine print on credit card bills and mortgage documents and determine what fees, penalties and interest rates are fair.
The Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be in charge of regulating credit cards, savings accounts and mortgages in the same way other government agencies regulate the safety of drugs, food and toys.
Obama said Americans are demanding it.
"Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out — those things will be a thing of the past," the president said in a statement accompanying the 152-page draft bill. "And enforcement will be the rule, not the exception."
Republicans and bankers, however, already are balking and gearing up for a fight.
Part of the agency's mission would be to implement new restrictions on credit card companies passed by Congress this spring. That law prohibited arbitrary rate hikes and limited access to cards by minors.
The consumer protection agency also would regulate high-rate "payday loans" and the terms on savings, checking and debit card accounts, including overdraft charges.
Under the plan, lenders would be required to be up front about their products, potentially applying warning labels to risky products like mortgage payments that balloon in the future.
The agency's creation would extend federal oversight to a market that so far has mostly escaped it. Confusing and risky mortgages are blamed for contributing to the housing crisis that roiled Wall Street and resulted in a $700 billion taxpayer bailout for banks.
Democrats in Congress have embraced the idea of a consumer financial watchdog as a way of showing voters they are on their side during tough economic times.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called the proposal one of his highest priorities and said his panel would consider it in July as part of a broader effort to overhaul federal regulations on the entire financial industry.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, who faces a tough re-election fight next year, also vowed to steer the proposal through the Senate Banking Committee he chairs despite staunch opposition from the banking industry. "It is unbelievable that some of the same irresponsible actors that helped create the current financial mess would argue that we are doing too much for consumers," said Dodd, D-Conn.
Republicans and financial executives counter that setting strict rules on the consumer market will limit options for buyers and potentially increase the cost of financial products as banks try to make up for lost revenue.
Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said the bill could give consumers a false sense of security when it comes to selecting financial products.
"The proposed CFPA appears to be premised on the idea that Washington is better at making financial decisions for all Americans than leaving that choice up to individual Americans," he said.
Steve Bartlett, president of the Financial Services Roundtable, said the new agency would end up increasing the costs of financial products, reduce consumer choices and "stifle innovation and increase confusion" on the part of consumers.
Proponents of the agency say its creation doesn't have to mean fewer products on the market.
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University professor who long has advocated creation of a consumer-protection agency, said she envisions a system that would allow products to remain available as long as lenders are up front and concise about their terms.

For example, the agency could allow banks to offer mortgages with ballooning monthly payments as long as lenders compare their terms to a traditional fixed-rate mortgage.

Warren said she thinks most consumers would have stayed away from many of the risky mortgages that contributed to the housing crisis had they understood them better.

"Most of the bad products were marketed by trickery," she said.

Likewise, Treasury Department officials said the agency's goal wouldn't necessarily be to lay a heavy hand on industry. The legislation explicitly requires the CFPA to consider the burden any new rule would place on a financial institution and whether it would restrict consumer access to credit.

Compliance would be enforced through penalties, but the CFPA also would require an annual operating budget, which has yet to be disclosed. The agency would be independent of other government agencies that now share those oversight duties and take away some power from some, most notably the Federal Reserve.

The agency would be run by a five-member board with four members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The fifth member would be the director of the new National Bank Supervisor, the merged agency the administration is proposing to create to take over bank regulation duties.

The proposal is part of broader plan by Obama to increase oversight of the financial industry and eliminate regulatory gaps believed to have contributed to the economic crisis. The plan would be the most sweeping rewrite of the government rule book since the 1930s, although lawmakers are split on whether it does enough to streamline the complex system.

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Associated Press writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.