Prepared Piano Guidelines

[Joel Jones]

On 3/3/04 6:35 AM, "James Ellis" <claviers@nxs.net> wrote:
Jim, Horace, and Wim
    Agreed.  UW designated a 9' and a 6' specifically for prepared
performance.  They were used in practice and in concert, which meant moving
them into the concert hall when needed.  It made everybody happy as the
modifications could be left in the piano eliminating the long preparation
for the practice and performance.
    The extended techniques interest comes and goes on a 3 to 5 year cycle.
It depends upon your faculty and their interests,  I have experienced many
great performances at UW, Oberlin, etc.  Boy sopranos singing into a piano
with the dampers off the strings, jazz pianists drumming on the struts and
picking the duplex scale, to golf balls bouncing off the strings.  Cage, for
one, seems to  have stood the test of time, others have been acknowledge as
a flash.
    We as technicians as in the perfect position to draw the line - not just
in the sand.  Put it in stone.  Thou shalt not paint the bass
strings...masking tape dampers,...beat the soundboard with beer cans filled
with rocks...etc  There are safe ways of marking dampers and identifying
nodes.  
    If your piano faculty looks the other way then subtly and not so subtly
we, as technicians, must show the resultant damage.  Because a composer
writes a piece to burn a piano, doesn't mean it is OK with the  fire
marshall.  Damage from unsanctioned, ill advised tinkering and how it
applies to everyone must be put in the spotlight.
    Encouragement for productive innovation likewise deserves applause.
If it sustains interest in the piano, can that be all bad??

Joel
UW - retired
-- 
Joel & Connie Jones
9 Springwood Circle
Madison, WI  53717
608 - 833 - 1488
FAX 608 - 833 - 6724

> I appreciate the back-up support from Horace and Wim.  Thanks, fellows.  By
> suggesting some hard and fast guidelines for those who do "prepared piano"
> stuff, I was not implying that I go along with it.  I don't.  I think it is
> a bunch of garbage.  There are instruments that are designed to be plucked
> and bowed, and others designed to be strummed, etc.  The piano was not made
> for that.  By suggesting guidelines, I was just acknowledging that we are
> going to have this stuff, whether we like it or not, so let's try to
> protect the piano, as best we can.  Even better, set aside an old junker
> for this nonsense.  "Prepared piano" is a misnomer if I ever saw it or
> heard it.
> 
> Fifty five years ago, UT had a piano professor who was a real teacher.  He
> taught the kids how to play the piano for real.  On the same day he
> retired, the UT music department featured one of those
> out-in-never-never-land "concerts" where they did crazy things with the
> piano - something that would NEVER have been done under that professor's
> administration.
> 
> Sincerely, Jim Ellis
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives