Piano Wire Processes

the black + white project

I approach musical improvisation as an exquisite mystery, one that is endlessly surprising. The mystery of the relationship between harmony and rhythm – and how they inhabit time – is what has guided me in this and both of my previous solo piano CDs.

Over the last three decades I have enjoyed composing for modern dance, theater, film, and television using tools on the “bleeding edge” of technology, so the return to the acoustic piano for my first solo piano CD, Falling Awake, was an exciting return to my roots as a classically trained concert pianist-turned-composer. On several pieces from Falling Awake and Green, I employed a technique of damping the strings with one hand while playing the damped keys with the other hand, which results in a wonderfully muted percussive tone. On this CD I began scratching and plucking the strings directly (entirely bypassing the mechanism of hammers that the piano is designed for), resulting in timbres that are delicate and quiet – and that can only be heard if you are right next to the piano. Once I began recording these timbres, I felt like I had crossed back into the realm of experimental sound and proceeded to further explore coloring the sound using an audio processor from Eventide that I had been beta testing called the H9.

the piano and studio

Sitting at the piano and allowing the muse to enter is most successful when I’m at a beautifully voiced and tuned piano. If a piano is out of tune or doesn’t “sing,” I am pulled out of that state of pure attention to sound, prevented from following the voices I hear inside the ringing of the overtones and which guide my fingers.

While I have always favored the richness of the Steinway and Bosendorfer grand pianos, there is a Yamaha grand piano at BCDF Film Production Studios n Kerkonson, NY that I played one 4th of July – and it was delicious. A year passed and once again I found myself at BCDF’s 4th of July party playing the piano as owner Claude Dal Farra took guests on tours. I was hooked – and I asked if I could record my solo piano improvisations there. With the assistance of in-house composer Spenser Hutchings and the generosity of Claude, I was introduced to Jeremy Jones, the recording studio’s engineer. Jeremy had gathered some amazing gear in the tracking room – including a Neve Mixing console and Burl Audio b80 Mothership analog-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters, which emulate the tape saturation characteristics of analog recording.

recording and mastering

With Jeremy Jones engineering we recorded this CD in 10 sessions, blending sound from the Josephson Engineering c700s stereo microphone and two AKG 414 B-ULS microphones. Microphone preamps were Thermionic Culture Early Bird 2.2 and Millennia Media HV-3D. The mastering was done in California by Barry Wood at "The Other Room"

After the first sessions, I noticed that the Yamaha was equipped with a Disklavier device (essentially an accurate modern-day player piano). We began recording all performances through this device, allowing me to load files for playback on my midi piano and editing with Digital Performer, the sequencer I’ve used for decades for scoring film and television. We then transferred files back to the Disclavier and re-recorded the performances on the Yamaha. This process represented the best of both worlds, combining the spontaneity of improvisation with edit-ability.

The track listing encompasses acoustic piano explorations in improvisation, followed by enhanced edited acoustic piano pieces, and ending with electronically enhanced piano pieces. All recordings are single-pass improvisations except the last two – in which I blended a second track of electronically enhanced piano.