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)

Very pretty.

A pianist’s soul: Amazing composition between the pianist and the visualization of his way of playing, ‘the more different tonalities a piece has, the more colorful the visualization will be’, and since everyone plays different even the same song will result in a different visualization. The performance generates a three-dimensional image which appears to surrounds the performer and the listener. I love the use of infographics, the stripes allow one to say something about the composition aswell as the specific performance: Which notes were played the most? Which were the loudest notes? Which range of the keys was played mostly? How harmonically constant was the music? it A very evocative interaction, you can find all the project story here Clavilux 2000 [vvvv](via @mikelemmon)

(via tropicalbeauty)

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)

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

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.

Champ pianist Sarah Cahill performing Henry Cowell’s Tiger and Lou Harrison’s Largo Ostinato, from the December 2008 Other Minds “New Music Seance.”

You should really watch the first 3:30 to see Cowell’s Tiger. There are some fiercely awesome whole arm tone-clusters in there. (How’s that for a sales pitch?)

(via Sequenza21)

That’s right, it is a piece based on the NOKIA RINGTONE, in turn based on a waltz by Tárrega. The touch tones at the end are an especially nice touch—what’s that number? I think it’s 135-6136, or maybe 468-9469. Anybody have perfect pitch?

Playing a ringtone on the piano, whatever. Playing DTMF tones on the piano? Awesome.

(via Unpop!)

Backwards Piano Roundup

Thank to a little hint from @synthgear and inspired by this “backwards” piano post, I recently went on a journey into the YouTube world of backwards piano playing. Here are some of my favorites, categorized into what will surely be a dominant typology of backwards piano styles:

(If you’re reading in the Tumblr dashboard or RSS, these vids probably won’t show up, so click on over!)

First, and most common, the “back on bench, arms crossed”:

If you look at the hands, you’ll notice that they are still basically in the same position as regular playing, just made more complicated by the crossed arms and lack of clear sight lines.

This style also be accomplished from under the piano, without a bench:

Now, the “back on piano” style, which still puts the hands in the proper position, and this time, just eliminated sight lines and scuffs up your piano:

And I can’t embed this one, but there is also the “legs flipped over head” style, which seems to be not too difficult, provided you can fling your legs over your head.

Or the age-old favorite, “accidentally put camera upside down.”

But my favorite style, of which I have two variations here, is the “thumbs out” style, which actually puts your fingers on the keys with your thumbs apart instead of together. The “sitting upright thumbs out”:

(see also this horrifying variation, “sitting upright thumbs out, freaky double-jointed elbows.”)

And the “back on bench thumbs out”:

Or “standing up thumbs out”:

The cream of the crop is probably this one, in which a guy plays “The Entertainer” regularly, then sitting upright thumbs out, then sitting on floor thumbs out PEDALING WITH HEAD:

I couldn’t seem to find any with someone laying on top of a grand piano, playing so their fingers point away from the piano (like in the Allora & Calzadilla piece I linked above). If you find any other categories, let me know in the comments!

Allora & Calzadilla’s Stop, Repair, Prepare is a performance piece in which a pianist tries to play a piano from a hole that has been cut in its center, while walking said piano around the gallery. The pedals have been turned backwards, and the middle keys just thud (the strings have been cut out for the hole).

Those of you in New York can see the performances at the Gladstone Gallery on 24th Street from late January through February, thanks to a set of pianists who appear to be very dedicated to playing such a difficult set-up!

update: oops, time travelers only, it was 2009 not 2010. (thanks ted)