IRCAM Prepared Piano

I am both interested and amused by the IRCAM Prepared Piano. In my early days accompanying for modern dance classes (and before I knew of John Cage's term "prepared piano") I would place pieces of cardboard, aluminum foil, clothes hangers and other objects between and on top of the piano strings. It created a funky rhythmic texture that pleased me and changed the voices of the piano. I still use this technique occasionally in concerts with my favorite instrument - the acoustic piano. I find it both an ironic and yet predictable development of synthetic music that such an old acoustic "trick" is now a featured electronic instrument. It is of course inevitable. Yet I still prefer the wonderful accidents and raw sound of completely acoustic instruments. I find the majority of compositions using these synthetic techniques to be less innovative, adventurous and original than compositions using purely acoustic instruments. Without the usage of looping, samples, etc. the repetitions and reliance on "sound apps magic tricks" becomes tedious. The "thinking" of the synthesizer is by definition less imaginative than the human mind. I admire the engineering behind such developments - yet I still applaud the much richer world of acoustic music.

-Grayson Hugh

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/scores-for-modern-dance-1997/id317242642