hammering / stringing

in the first photo below, i am pictured hammering end pins into the rear of one of the instruments.  end pins (hitch pins) are wonderful things.  if you’ve ever tried to string a piano string on a homemade instrument with a nail or screw at one end, then you know how flimsy those actually are.  they bend under any pressure at all.  end pins are solid steel(?), and absolutely un-pliable.  a big shot out to mike gil of seattle, aka blind mike’s piano service, for providing me with the piano string and end pins for this project.

in the later 3 photos below, i am stringing the instruments.  finding the right tension is a balance between getting it tight and not bowing the soundboard, since the harp is no longer present to withstand the high tension of the strings.

 

cutting the soundboard

with all the strings and the harp (which is the heaviest part of the piano for certain) removed we began to cut into the soundboard, pinblock, and surrounding wood.  we cut the piano into 3 pieces, eventually resulting in 3 diferently sized and shaped instruments.  many, many thanks to open space’s technician, dallas, who is much more skilled with the circular and jig saws than i.

below are two of the three cut soundboards waiting to be strung, etc.

discarded piano parts

one component of my residency was to use discarded parts from the piano to assemble an installation in the gallery space at open space.
here are some pieces from the piano (and some supplies), in various stages of placement.

destringing

after the casing had been removed, the next step in disassembling the piano was to remove the strings.

like fish
or octopus.  i felt as though i was dealing with tentacles,
dressing some kind of sea-creature.

i will post recordings of the de-stringing process soon.

middle schoolers, piano sledging

yesterday, about fifty 7th and 8th graders visited the gallery from a nearby middle school. they were hungry and loud, but listened to me play a bit on the de-tuned piano while they ate their lunches.

with the help of open space’s technician, dallas, i then proceeded to ‘remove’ the outside casing of the piano with a tool who’s name, i have recently learned, is maul.
needless to say, the kids enjoyed this portion of the presentation.

unfortunately, i failed to properly press ‘record’ on my recorder, so the amazing sound of bludgeoning the piano with the MAUL went undocumented. another time.

next, the kids got a chance to see what sounds they could make with the inside of the piano. the spectacle resembled a pack of dogs ripping apart their pray. i suppose that is one approach to making sound.

the piano, unaltered

the piano, by french piano makers, pleyel.

some background on myself and the piano(s)

a short bio can be found here (along with all the sound files linked to from this blog).

i have played the piano since the fourth grade in tacoma washington, first taking beginning piano lessons, then studying jazz, and then improvised music and 20th century composed music.
around 2001 i began to experiment with playing the inside of the piano.  i was playing and performing regularly with a group of improvisers in seattle who were working with what we then called “extended techniques.”  my explorations into the inside of the piano at this time were part of a search for sounds i could use, as a pianist, that could better engage the sounds my musical partners were using in the context of improvisation.
in other words, in an ensemble sonic world comprised of mostly unrecognizable (at least to the non-connoisseur) instrumental and electronic sounds, the traditionally played piano almost always sticks out as a piano.  depending on the music, this is not always desirable.
these early explorations involved all the usual and obvious inside piano experiments – rubbing the strings with various objects mostly, and putting chopsticks in between the strings and letting them vibrate back and forth.  while playing with a musical saw player i began to excite the piano strings by rubbing upwards on the swizzle sticks i had placed between them.  this produced a very beautiful, overtone-rich drone.
also around this time, my seattle partners and i developed a healthy musical and personal exchange with a group of musicians in portland.  the music in portland seemed more detached from free-jazz and european free improv than the music a lot of us were playing in seattle.  it seemed to me that the portlanders were dealing more with duration and sound, whereas we were really dealing with tones and rythm, albeit in an extremely fragmented and abstracted way.  at the time, this was pivotal for me, and i continued to experiment with the inside of the piano, searching for techniques that would allow me to engage with this music more directly.
over the years i switched from the swizzle sticks to wooden dowels with rosin, and the placement of the dowels has moved from suspended-in-between-the-strings to directly on the soundboard.  i have identified a focused area of sounds that i continue to develop through small changes in technique, exploration of the physical instrument(s), and the application of amplification and electronics.

i can compare the sound(s) to the wind.  it’s like the wind.  there are many different types of wind, many different qualities.

all that being said, i also continue to play the piano as a piano.  for several years, these two practices have been totally self-contained and separate.  however, i feel like they may start to inter-penetrate in the near future.  we will see.  in the meantime, the recordings on this blog, all from my residency at open space, march 1-6, 2010, stem from different points in the process of taking apart a piano and making a new instrument out of it.  the end goal being an instrument that allows me to further investigate the sonic area i’ve been working with or the past few years.

de-tuning, march 2

yesterday i de-tuned the piano.
it sounds quite beautiful
i made some recordings.

here is one
here is another, quite different.

solo performance, march 1

last night, march 1, i performed a solo on the piano.
the instrument was beautifully out of tune (i didn’t alter it at all, it came that way from its previous owner), and the space is very live.

the recording is here.

pianoreconstructed is a documentation of an installation / performance by gust burns

this blog documents a project by gust burns at open space, a gallery in victoria bc.

during the week of march 1-6 i will disassemble an old piano, removing the casing, action, strings, and harp, then using the components (mostly the soundboard and tuning pins) to make a new instrument.

on monday, march 1, i performed a solo improvisation on the piano without altering it at all – very out of tune, and without all 88 keys working.  on saturday march 6, i will perform another solo, this time on the new instrument.  for the second set, i’ll do a duet with rachael wadham from vancouver.  she will be playing prepared zither.

some details on the events and the project can be found here.