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Showing posts with the label Cowell

Yes, I dismantled a perfectly good Piano but it's OK, I have an extra....

...well, actually it did need some repair and I thought about going that route but realized that I had a much more interesting path I could follow; a giant Zither. That's right, I said it...a Giant Zither. Some might argue the terminology but that's OK, I just like saying Giant Zither. In the tradition of John Cage, Arvo Part, ( Tabula Rasa ) Henry Cowell and more recently Brian Eno and the Aphex Twins I am going to mutilate, alter and otherwise "modify" (my favorite word) the standard method of playing the beloved Pianoforte . A brief background on Prepared Piano; usually, this term refers to taking a piano (typically a grand or baby grand for ease of access to the strings) and placing various types of"modifiers"directly on or in between the strings themselves. If you have access to horizontally strung piano give it a try, it can produce tones that sound like ethereal bells( Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa is a wonderful example of this ) to weird and w