History grande

Hi,

Golly! A pseudo pedal steel hitch pin arrangement would take some
engineering at modern tensions. I've heard about a prototype piano
tuning machine that took forever.

There's Nicola Vicentino's vertically adaptive system for the
arcicembalo, also Scipione Stella and Fabio Colonna's Sambuca lincea
(clavichord -> bebung!). Then several inventors during the early 19th
century built instruments to increase the range of pitches available to
a performer, unlike most earlier extended instruments they didn't
complicate the keyboard and were designed explicitly for JI. Harding
mentions Charles Clagget, William Hawkes, and David Loeschman, Jorgensen
adds Henry Liston and Charles Broughton; all of them employed stops to
introduce supplementary pitches, available in form of additional strings
or pipes, or adjustable string or pipe length. Their combination
permitted Liston to suggest hundreds of pitches might be built into
instruments like his Euharmonic organ.

Eivind Groven worked on an extended piano along with an organ. The piano
employed a switching array hooked up to a keyboard, controlling three
pneumatic player pianos in JI. David Loberg Code's Groven Project uses
solenoid driven MIDI players, much as Patrick Ozzard Low describes for
the logical piano in his book. (Pity, I think there's a much larger
dynamic range to the old, messy pneumatic reproducing pianos than
possible with solenoids)

Clark Battle is building a small upright piano that's able to gliss,
also immediately to switch between four tunings (he specifically
mentions JI, too) with up to 40 notes. I don't know how it works,
though! He was inspired by a Kenny Werner concert.

I spent some time considering options for piano after a performance by
Curtis Bahn on Saturday. He performs with a modified electric upright
which triggers all sorts of computer stuff, from what I could tell
through pitch, position, bowing, and a couple continuous controllers
mounted to the instrument. Pretty amazing, except it didn't feed back to
the instrument - the Audioforte Music Reproduction System is something
that could by driving a soundboard. Something I'm considering, and which
Reed Ghazala actually has implemented (also, Clementi I think patented
something like it) is to make advantage of string partials. The simpler
method is to build a mute that touches the strings, in existing forms at
half their length; a more complex version would use solenoids to push
felt fingers to a selected node independently for each string. A global
actuation, like by a pedal would change the timbre but also transpose
the instrument, but software similar in function to sostenuto could lend
adaptive qualities: say, depress a key, push the pedal and subsequent
notes would play related partials. This might be developed further
without direct mechanical correlation between key and sounding string,
still limited so far as a basic tuning. Pretty amusing that it seems
suited mostly for straight strung instruments (Reed's only worked on the
over strung bass strings), most specifically to a few unusual 19th
century grands to minimize clatter and obstruction of, or holes in the
soundboard.

The index of possible innovations for piano in the Center for New
Musical Instruments brochure includes

Alternative keyboard design and modelling
Acoustic piano
Electroacoustic piano
Hybrid piano
Electrodynamic vibration drivers (Audioforte)
Acoustic-electronic string-bar technology
Fretted piano
Real-time adaptive tuning
Radical new piano design

<http://www.lgu.ac.uk/mit/cnmi/>

Clark

[Clark wrote:]
>Golly! A pseudo pedal steel hitch pin arrangement would take some
>engineering at modern tensions. I've heard about a prototype piano
>tuning machine that took forever.

Yeah, it'd be a stretch to achieve quickly and reliably, I agree.

[lots of interesting stuff]

>The index of possible innovations for piano in the Center for New
>Musical Instruments brochure includes
>
>Alternative keyboard design and modelling
>Acoustic piano
>Electroacoustic piano
>Hybrid piano
>Electrodynamic vibration drivers (Audioforte)
>Acoustic-electronic string-bar technology
>Fretted piano
>Real-time adaptive tuning
>Radical new piano design
>
><http://www.lgu.ac.uk/mit/cnmi/>

Just went there; neat site!! Are you affiliated with them? You seem
to know a lot about this subject.

JdL