The Jankó, or “uniform,” keyboard is a weird-looking alternative layout for keyed instruments. It supposedly makes playing different scales easier by bringing notes closer together. Each row is made up of a series of whole steps, and adjacent rows are offset by a half step each. Like this:
This is the layout the Chromatone keyboard is based on, and for other examples, check out the via link below.
(via Squeezehead)
Pianistic Translations
In doing research on the player piano, a certain temptation has come up many times. Given the popularity of the phonograph as an object of academic inquiry (and the persistence of its basic working principles), it is basically mandatory that I compare the pianistic reproduction I’m looking at to phonographic reproduction.
So first, there is a question: What kinds of things am I comparing? I just called my topic “pianistic” reproduction, which is basically a working term meaning “with discrete notes and attacks, like a piano.” “Phonographic” reproduction, on the other hand, would mean “like a phonograph.” Basing my terms specifically on the technologies is not ideal: like a piano in what way? like a phonograph in what way? Jonathan Sterne did the hard work for the phonograph and ended up with “tympanic reproduction”—sound reproduction that is modeled on the eardrum (like all microphones and speakers). That seems to collect together iPods, phonographs, 8-track tapes, etc. in a meaningful way—based on a foundational shared principle. At the moment, my only parallel move would be to alter “pianistic” so that instead of referring to “piano” the technology, it refers to “pianism” the mode of engagement with keyboard instruments. This is a little obtuse, still working out terms, but I hope you get the idea.
Click through for a bunch of examples, after the jump.
![In an article for New York Magazine, Justin Davidson manages to tie together the majority of my musical/academic interests in a single argument about mechanical music and performance.
No really, he talks about Zenph Studios’ “re-performed” Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff, Ulrich Krieger’s arrangement of Metal Machine Music (the focus of my undergrad thesis), Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies, and Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique.
Needless to say, this is all right up my alley. Davidson’s point, generally, is that the relationship between humans and machines in music-making is complicated:
Zenph and Krieger may be heading in opposite directions—one automates performances, while the other puts mechanical art into human hands—but they are converging on the same goal: transforming a recording into a performance. Imagination rolls into technology and then back into live experience. Instrumentalists have always treated their specialized contraptions as expressive extensions of themselves, and technological improvements like valved horns, steel strings, and GarageBand all aim to enhance creativity. But Zenph’s musician-free live performance and Krieger’s warm-blooded robotic clangor aspire to a fresh and perfect synthesis of spirit and machine.
These attitudes towards instruments and music-making machines are exactly the focus of my research, and it is tremendously exciting to see the topic pop up in the public discourse like this.
[I apologize for the lightness of posts recently—apparently this is what thesis term is like. I promise I have some longer things coming down the pipe, when I get a moment between research trips and grad school interviews.]
(via New York Magazine, mailbackwards)](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxfbx6kUOT1qzf8epo1_250.jpg)
In an article for New York Magazine, Justin Davidson manages to tie together the majority of my musical/academic interests in a single argument about mechanical music and performance.
No really, he talks about Zenph Studios’ “re-performed” Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff, Ulrich Krieger’s arrangement of Metal Machine Music (the focus of my undergrad thesis), Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies, and Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique.
Needless to say, this is all right up my alley. Davidson’s point, generally, is that the relationship between humans and machines in music-making is complicated:
Zenph and Krieger may be heading in opposite directions—one automates performances, while the other puts mechanical art into human hands—but they are converging on the same goal: transforming a recording into a performance. Imagination rolls into technology and then back into live experience. Instrumentalists have always treated their specialized contraptions as expressive extensions of themselves, and technological improvements like valved horns, steel strings, and GarageBand all aim to enhance creativity. But Zenph’s musician-free live performance and Krieger’s warm-blooded robotic clangor aspire to a fresh and perfect synthesis of spirit and machine.
These attitudes towards instruments and music-making machines are exactly the focus of my research, and it is tremendously exciting to see the topic pop up in the public discourse like this.
[I apologize for the lightness of posts recently—apparently this is what thesis term is like. I promise I have some longer things coming down the pipe, when I get a moment between research trips and grad school interviews.]
(via New York Magazine, mailbackwards)
I am so charmed by these new muppets online bits (esp. Statler and Waldorf webcam-style at the end).
And another (you may need to go to the actual blog page to see it):
(via Joana Monteiro)
This is a pretty sculpture, although I wish there was a way to make the strings more immediately responsive. (Would be tough though, given that they have to spin up first.) The description, from YouTube, from Rhizome:
“Visions of the Amen” is an interactive kinetic sculpture by Mitchell F Chan. The piece is brought to life by the voice of talented young soprano Ashleigh Semkiw, performing in this video Messiaen’s Poemes Pour Mi. The primary elements of the sculpture are 16 strings, weighed down on one end by brass bars and attached at the other end to motors, spin at various speeds to sweep out those ghostly sine-wave forms, and pull up and down on the brass rods. The resultant visual effect, overall, looks something like 16 brass rods dancing, bobbing up and down in a forest of ghostly columns.
Each string in the arrangement is activated by a different note, and spins with a velocity dependent on the volume of that note. So each song and unique delivery creates a different ballet. The microphone feeds into a software that I wrote in Processing, which does some pitch and volume analysis, and then exports PWM values for all the motors via serial protocol to a set of microcontrollers.
(via Rhizome)
Gloggomobil is based on the principle of the barrel organ and helps to introduce a child to the world of music. When the black pegs are pushed into the holes on the drum and the simple turning mechanism is set in motion, melodies can be heard. A child can also produce bell-like sounds directly with the drumsticks on the detachable xylophone. Instead of just listening to music, a child will enjoy being able to compose music as well.
This is a gorgeous (and expensive—$1100!) toy, and at 35 x 33 x 17.5 cm, a nice size too. I’m not sure who’s in the business of teaching kids about the history of barrel-operated instruments, but if this were cheaper, it would be a good way to do it!
(via naef usa)
John Oswald - ‘Aria’ from Plunderphonics 69/96
From the liner notes:
We had a computer listen to Mr Gould playing the aria to the Goldberg Variations through a device which converts analogue pitches into digital notes. We fine-tuned or perhaps I should say finely untuned this ability so that the computer would hear approximately the right notes; it would add extra notes and spurious activity when it wasn’t sure what he had played. But it was good at getting most of the notes and the precise timing of the original. Once this info was collected into the computer it could be played back on any MIDI instrument or sampler. The sound could be electronic, or a toy piano or one of our klangprobes. But we had the opportunity to record a couple of the pianos Gould actually used, including the flagship CD318. This piano naturally has all the characteristics one associates with Glenn Gould’s style; including its quick, close action, and its lightness. So we then create a composite sampled keyboard using these recordings. There were some tuning anomalies with one of the pianos; we did some tuning of the samples intended to complement the harmonic structure of the ‘aria.’ Then the computer gave us a real time performance of its interpretation and we recorded it.
Henry Dagg’s “Sharpsichord” is a big barrel harp with two enormous metal amplifying cones and a hand crank. In this video you can watch him play “The Long and Winding Road” (along with a singer who sings along through a copper megaphone). Mechanical music, alive and well!
You can see another video and read more about it at BBC News.
update: and from tbon, a perhaps more awesome version that replaces the vocal line with a musical saw part:
Over at BLDGBLOG:
On the advice of a friend here in New York, my wife and I went over to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve to watch the school’s underground steam infrastructure be transformed, temporarily, into a thunderous musical instrument. Somewhere between subterranean calliope and mutant wave organ, steam-powered explosions of sound threatened to deafen everyone as it turned 2010.
The sounds (and accompanying steam clouds) are amazing. It sounds like there is a giant roaring animal under then ground.
(via BLDGBLOG)
Florent Ghys’s “Music for Multiple Basses, and the President of the United States” falls into the category of contemporary composition that I don’t usually blog about, but as it features the President and a title I kind of like, I decided to post it here anyway.
I do really enjoy how musical accompaniment can draw out the rhythmic and tonal patterns in regular speech (and without Auto-Tune!).
(via Sequenza21)
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