4 Responses to bzzzzzt….. tink, tink

1. Hamish says:

   January 29, 2007 at 9:01 am

   Hmm. It’s good to be prepared – have one’s piano ready for all possible contingencies. At first I thought there might be some kind of voltage being applied to the strings, THAT would be interesting in performance. Have you ever tried a ping-pong ball? Then there’s potential for a sort of game when the ball is bounced from string to string. Useful side effect of determining note choices, too (putting the fun back into aleatoric composition?).

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2. Ali says:

   January 29, 2007 at 10:52 am

   Dulcimer, harpsichord, piano and clavichord have all come to mind. Quite curious to find out what it is.

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3. tim says:

   January 29, 2007 at 11:13 am

   heh you got it!
   I haven’t tried a ping pong ball but its a great idea as being lighter
   you could get longer gaps between notes… I have used marbles but
   being heavier I ended up with dense scatters of notes but that was
   before I ‘prepared it’ – its certainly more percussive now!
   In fact i can definitely see myself doing a lot of single note/hit sample
   recording & then keymap it across a sampler to make rhythms

   Partly what motivated me to mess with preparing the piano was that
   a friend played me a sample library that included a prepared piano
   & i was very impressed with the percussive tones & harmonics but
   slightly repulsed by the idea of a ‘generic’ prepared piano – surely
   the idea of an interesting prepared piano is about the playing
   AND the preperation, no? Its through experimenting with materials
   & following instincts that lead you to eventually feel the piano is
   prepared enough to use, but reachign that state is a uniquely personal
   endeavour, rather than a generic prepared piano v1 or something…

   As soon as I used those alligator clips with the wires attached, the same
   thought went through my mind too.. sending signals through piano
   wires must be possible, like a giant spring reverb… hmmmm…

   Another source of inspiration for this was from watching the doco
   Touch the Sound about deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie
   At one point she has a jam with Fred Frith who is playing prepared
   guitars – its so beautiful to see & to hear! I highly recomend the doco:

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4. tim says:

   January 30, 2007 at 9:28 am

   Aye, it is a prepared baby grand piano!
   I inherited it from a friends aunty who didnt have room for it any more…
   It plays ok considering its age, but each tiem i have it tuned within a
   month or so a few notes have drifted or started beating between the
   multiple strings of each note… but after seeing Fred Friths prepared
   guitars i decided to head off to the hardware store & these photos
   are the result! I’ll record a bit with it & post an mp3
   it certainly shifts your thinking in terms of sitting down
   & actually playing something

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