“this is the beginning of steamfunk”

yes please (also, remarkably expressive) (also, nice dance there)

(via Create Digital Music)

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.

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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)

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)

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:

This is a preview of the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra, a group that brings together custom-built robotic musical instruments and human performers with modified instruments, unique musical interfaces, and hemispherical speaker-pods.

Can’t help but reblog something called the “machine orchestra.”

(update: and some more details over at Create Digital Music.)

(via Synthtopia )

Here is a more in-depth video about Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion Tour. In it, you can see more of the variety of instruments LEMUR has constructed for Metheny, and you can see the awesome processing that allows him to play a xylophone with his guitar, live. (Yeah, whoa.)

It’s all really interesting stuff, and exciting for me personally to see this potential resurgence of explicitly “mechanical” music.

‘Tippoo’s Tiger’ is an awesome, life-size beast of carved and painted wood, seen in the act of devouring a prostrate European in the costume of the 1790s.

This sculpture/organ is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, originally owned by Tipu Sultan, the “Tiger of Mysore” and avowed enemy of the British in the late 18th century.

Concealed in the bodywork is a mechanical pipe-organ with several parts, all operated simultaneously by a crank-handle emerging from the tiger’s shoulder. Inside the tiger and the man are weighted bellows with pipes attached. Turning the handle pumps the bellows and controls the air-flow to simulate the growls of the tiger and cries of the victim. The cries are varied by the approach of the hand towards the mouth and away, as the left arm - the only moving part - is raised and lowered.

Another pair of bellows, linked to the same handle, supplies wind for a miniature organ of 18 pipes built into the tiger, with stops under the tail.

Now that’s what I call a sculpture.

In some charming transmedia work, you can get a Tipu’s iTiger iPhone app, which includes a 3d model of the beast, or watch a half hour video about the history of the piece.

Siiiick.

(via Christina)

Rui Penha’s Robotic Gamelan is part of a “robotic percussion” roundup over at Create Digital Music. (yeah, I’m still catching up on blogs from the holidays, so what?)

The mallets are really gorgeous (are they typical gamelan equipment, just fastened to mechanical actuators? I’m not familiar enough with gamelan music to know). Also amazing are basically all the other robots in the roundup, so you should click over there.

(I reserve the right to plunder that roundup for future posts, because it is so awesome.)

(via Create Digital Music)

György Ligeti’s Poeme Symphonique is a piece for 100 metronomes. Set at various tempi, they’re all started at once, and then left to go until they wind down, eventually thinning out and producing rhythms from the dense and chaotic beginning. Classic Ligeti stuff here.

Click ahead to 1:30 in the video to see them start. (Although if I remember correctly, this is supposed to be the first piece in a concert, started before the doors are opened, so it runs as people are sitting down. The fancy starting contraption in the video is neat though!)

Another random fact I learned about this piece: it actually requires some practice to set up, because it is very easy to wind the metronomes up so far that they go for a very very long time.