Someone has finally come up with an easily retunable piano. Looks (and sounds) a little more like a clavichord, actually, and while I’m pleased about the retuning, each string appears to have only about a whole tone’s leeway. You’re still more or less limited to 12 pitches to the octave, but there’s a lot you can do with that: not only meantone and other historical temperaments, but the tunings of most of the standard pieces for retuned piano: Ben Johnston’s Suite for Microtonal Piano, The Well-Tuned Piano, The Harp of New Albion, and so on. It’s presumably far more affordable than the piano Trimpin once designed for me on a napkin, which could be automatically retuned via computer while you played. They’ll have a whole world of microtonal acoustic instruments invented by the time I’m too old to lift a pen to write for them. (h/t to McLaren)
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Jon Szanto says
December 8, 2009 at 10:21 pmGood to have you back, Kyle.
KG replies: Thanks, Jon. I’ll have to blog someday soon about why I feel disillusioned with blogging, I guess, won’t I?
Richard says
December 9, 2009 at 12:58 pmA great idea, but,sadly, it’s likely to be a one of a kind!
Ryan Tanaka says
December 10, 2009 at 1:18 pmI want one!
Henry Lowengard says
December 10, 2009 at 5:45 pmIt seems a little limited, but not any more than the piano that dynamically retunes by heating the strings (http://bit.ly/hot-string-piano). It’s nice and mechanical – I like the “hands on” aesthetic.
In fact, I’d like a system like this for my hammered dulcimer – I have a real need for it, actually.
The device I’d create would use very long strings to keep the tension down and pitch accuracy high, a carbon fiber body to keep the weight down, and bridges on rails, with three bridges on each string course so the intervals played on both sides could be unrelated instead of being held to a fixed interval (usually 3:2, but on some systems, not. )
David Beardsley says
December 10, 2009 at 6:20 pmI always look forward to new blog posts from you Kyle.
KG replies: Thanks, David, I appreciate it. I just don’t know if I have anything else to say.
Bob Gilmore says
December 11, 2009 at 11:29 amhey Kyle, blogging sucks! Write music and books instead.
KG replies: That’s sort of what I’d been thinking.
Ernest Ambrus says
December 12, 2009 at 3:10 amIt’s good to see you back. Your take on things is refreshing, to be honest. Merry Christmas 🙂
Rob Davidson says
December 14, 2009 at 10:25 pmThat “someone” is the estimable composer and author Geoff Smith.
Richard says
December 15, 2009 at 7:28 pmKyle,
Don’t give up blogging. Your’s are one of the few I look at. With your replies we kind of get a dialog. What would be great would be a place where everyone here could get together and bull-shit. The problem with chatrooms is that we all have to be there in “real time”. Keep it up, you are anh interesting person.