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.
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.
This post is part of my attempt to port my master’s thesis into blog form. Over the next [arbitrary and probably long amount of time], I’ll be posting longer-form pieces that track the various themes of the thesis, from the dominance of the speaker/microphone paradigm to the use of scientific rhetoric by 1920s player piano laboratories. I’m hoping they’ll be intelligible on their own, but as they go up, you can see them all together in chronological order here. You could also skip ahead and download the real deal PDF. This first installment is more or less directly copied from my introduction—a description of an unusual Glenn Gould concert.
Zenph Studios: Making Pianistic History
“I was totally wowed,” a woman in the audience told CBC News. “The only thing missing was a hologram of Gould actually playing.” [1]
In 2006, on what would have been Glenn Gould’s 74th birthday, in the studio named after him at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto, Zenph Studios produced a concert featuring his performance of the work that launched his career when he recorded it for Columbia Masterworks 50 years previous: Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The Variations, published in 1741, had been considered esoteric harpsichord music until Gould’s interpretation on the piano revived them for a modern audience—an aria and 30 short contrapuntal variations on its bass theme. Zenph’s concert was unusual in many respects, but two facts suggested that it should not have happened at all: Gould famously abandoned live performance at the age of 31, and he died at 51.
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)
This post is the first of many to come that will be little snippets of thesis-related thought. I’m focusing on a series of objects, people, and practices from the long and weird history of player pianos, and these blurbs are what come out. They’re in no particular order, and they might not make sense individually (although I hope they do). Comments on any aspect are welcomed!
Mechanical Fidelity
[photo ©Mark Manring]
Zenph Studios has a peculiar business model. From their website:
Zenph® Studios takes audio recordings and turns them back into live performances, precisely replicating what was originally recorded. Our software-based process extracts every musical nuance of a recorded performance, and stores the data in a high-resolution digital file. These re-performance files contain the details of how every note in the composition was played, including pedal actions, volume, and articulations – all with millisecond timings.
These digital files are played back on modern player pianos and recorded for sale. Zenph focuses on recreating the original operation of the piano—improvements to recording technology ensure that the new recording will be an improvement over the old. However, the idea of “re-performance” and the relationship between player pianos and acoustic recording have a long history.
