Posts tagged piano
An improvement, I would say, on the katzenklavier.
“The 715 Four-Note Chords,” from Chord Catalogue by Tom Johnson
I like to think of “The Chord Catalogue” as a sort of natural phenomenon—something which has always been present in the ordinary musical scale, and which I simply observed, rather than invented. It is not so much a composition as simply a list.
In his Chord Catalogue, Tom Johnson plays every possible combination of notes within one octave. This segment runs through all of the 715 possible combinations of four notes. You can see the score [PDF] here, although the piece is typically communicated verbally by explaining the process through which one can hit every chord—raising the lowest note one semitone at a time, until it hits the second lowest note, at which point that note shifts up and the process repeats. Rests separate each of those short runs. (If you’re curious, there are 8178 possible chords. When you get to the nine, ten, eleven, and twelve-note chords, it gets tough to tell them apart!)
Another marvelous hybrid instrument from Diego Stocco: the Bassoforte, constructed from the parts of a piano keyboard and an electric bass (among other things), and played with loops and great aplomb. I think it sounds kind of like a sick cover version of “Personal Jesus.”
(via Synthtopia)
Going to see this tonight, very excited. Sez Wikipedia:
Mantra is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was composed in 1970 and premiered in autumn of the same year in Donaueschingen. The work is scored for two ring-modulated pianos; each player is also equipped with a chromatic set of crotales (antique cymbals) and a wood block, and one player is equipped with a short-wave radio producing morse code or a magnetic tape recording of morse code.
(via New England Conservatory)
update: Whoa.
Yvonne Loriod playing “Le Moqueur Polyglotte” (The Mockingbird) from Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles. RIP.
(Part 2 here.)
Lang Lang plays “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the iPad, presumably using Smule’s piano app that automatically plays the notes in proper sequence—you provide the timing with your taps. I especially like when he tries to play the real piano at the same time.
(via everyone)
This K’nex robot plays “Heart and Soul” in a duet with its creator. How sweet.
(via Create Digital Music)
Okay, when you’re in the thick of writing about piano performance technology from 1920, it’s kind of gratifying to see that there’s an app for that.
This went around the blogs (and I think I saw it on the BBC site) a while ago, but I don’t think I ever got around to blogging it. Needless to say, as a fan of pianistic interventions, I love it. Although I’m sure it loses tuning like nobody’s business.
The Fluid Piano
This is pretty mind blowing! A piano with no fixed tuning. Each note can be separately tuned on-the-fly whilst performing. Which allows the very strict tuning of the westernised piano to become completely open to change limited only by the performers imagination.
(via plundr)
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