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?).
🙂
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:
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 😉
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?).
🙂
Dulcimer, harpsichord, piano and clavichord have all come to mind. Quite curious to find out what it is.
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:
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 😉