Vibrations and how they get to your ears.
Noise for airports is a blog about culture, sound, music, and technology.
You can filter the posts to see just things I wrote or made.
Updated (sometimes) by Nick Seaver.
Totally gorgeous city maps wrapped around a barrel and used to play the piano. Up my alley, obviously.
(via information aesthetics)
The Music Trades, 1924:
Entire Piano Industry to Profit by Work of Newly Organized Research Department of American Piano Company
“Among other things,” said Mr. Stoddard in discussing the plans of the new department, “we shall make a careful research into tone analysis. […] We doubt if there has been enough absolutely accurate knowledge in this whole subject of tone production. We cannot, of course, predict what we will find out, but we propose to go into the matter as thoroughly as is humanly possible. The manner in which we are approaching this subject is revolutionary.”
Zenph Software Creates Opportunity: Interactive Technology Delivers Unique Educational and Performance Experience That Promises to Expand the Keyboard Market
RePerform provides a user-friendly environment for recording and editing performance data at up to eight times time resolution of normal MIDI data. The program measures a wide range of parameters that correspond to even the subtlest nuances of a musician’s performance — from hammer velocity to pedal technique — ultimately replicating the gestures, timing, and physicality that define an artist’s individual imprint on a piece of music. “Representing the artist’s unmistakable signature, this incredibly rich, highly-detailed data set can then be used to create new music,” says Litterst.
Jürgen Hocker has done a fantastic thing and uploaded videos of his Ampico Bösendorfer grand piano playing the rolls of every Conlon Nancarrow study for player piano. He reputedly is the only one with a whole set, having worked with Nancarrow during his lifetime, and the videos all begin with a few photos of Nancarrow, Hocker and archival material.
It is fantastic to be able to see the keys and roll while the studies play. (Not to mention the pleasure of hearing them on a different piano than usual, restored under Nancarrow’s supervision.) See the rest at Hocker’s YouTube page.
(via mmd)
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the thesis-related pleasure of visiting a family friend’s player piano (an old Cable Company Euphona). We played around with the rolls, which are still being released (she had a Garth Brooks piano roll!), and my girlfriend, Christina, took video.
She edited together the footage into an epilepsy-inducing frenzy, making what is probably the only Conlon Nancarrow music video. It is awesome.
This is so great.
A video demonstration of how the push-up pianola is played, and then a little performance on it. Playing machines to play machines!
Pianola, Pistonola, Orchestrelle, Amphion, Apollo, Angelus, Simplex, Humana, Aristo, Neola, Pianotist, Electrelle, Cecilian, Rex, Aeriola
Study 40b for Player Piano - Conlon Nancarrow
One of Nancarrow’s later studies for the player piano. In it, there are two voices at a tempo ratio of e/pi. I usually have a hard time hearing the wild tempo relationships in these studies, and that remains the case here, but this one sounds so amazing.
The most recent issue of Cabinet magazine has an excellent article about Nancarrow that gets at why these works are so important.
