# Music for flooded grand piano



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Looking for music performed on a flooded grand piano (filled with water to just above the strings).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I...don't think a piano would survive this?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Looking for music performed on a flooded grand piano (filled with water to just above the strings).


You...uh...what? Maybe I read that wrong. Have some coleslaw.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

As usual, a Couchie post made me laugh out loud. Thank you.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

It's 2015. Some young avant-garde composer must have done this?


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

Possibly Handel's 'Water Music', transcribed for piano. Or Cage's 'Sonatas and Interludes for Flooded Piano'.


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## GKC (Jun 2, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Looking for music performed on a flooded grand piano (filled with water to just above the strings).


Fresh water, salt water; what? Salinity factors into the sound and key action.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Couchie said:


> It's 2015. Some young avant-garde composer must have done this?


We have prepared piano, where the piano acts in between a regular piano and a multi-percussion instrument, that gives a wiry timbre, a wooden timbre, or activates other sorts of sounds.

We have piano with magnetic strings, where electromagnets induce the piano's magnetic strings to spontaneously vibrate, allowing us to hear a more pure and long lasting waveform without the "initial hammering and subsequent decay" of a normally played piano.

Both of these were designed for legitimate, particulate, artistic reasons where a sound/effect was desired. A flooded piano would produce an overly damped muddy sound that wouldn't distinguish which key was being pressed (i.e. could you tell whether the pianist hit A or B flat?) and therefore wouldn't be a practical use of the piano for musical reasons.

My goal in life is to be a boring pedantically precise buzzkill.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> We have prepared piano, where the piano acts in between a regular piano and a multi-percussion instrument, that gives a wiry timbre, a wooden timbre, or activates other sorts of sounds.
> 
> We have piano with magnetic strings, where electromagnets induce the piano's magnetic strings to spontaneously vibrate, allowing us to hear a more pure and long lasting waveform without the "initial hammering and subsequent decay" of a normally played piano.
> 
> ...


But what if that overly damped muddy sound was the desired sound that the hypothetical avant-garde composer wanted?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Couchie said:


> It's 2015. Some young avant-garde composer must have done this?


Once. They'll never lend him a piano again.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

La Cathedrale Engloutie would be an excellent piece to try out on such an instrument.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

You need only ask.






[Okay - okay! Please don't think I had any idea there was such a thing before this thread. I just did a Google search and this was the first thing to come up.]


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Maybe a piano reduction of Act 1 of Das Rheingold? Believe all the action is underwater. Wagner doesn't tell us how Alberich survives without a breathing system, or how he sings with his lungs full of water. Guess that's what they mean when they talk about "suspension of disbelief."


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

_Flooded Music_ by ArtMusic, I have started it. Thank you for the idea!


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

You could introduce a piano into the tanks at sea world and see if you could encourage the whales to take in interest in it's sonic properties for their whale song. They might find it an interesting object to direct their song to.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Couchie said:


> It's 2015. Some young avant-garde composer must have done this?


Go back to 1967 for a composition featuring conversations inside a piano. It's called Lumpy Gravy by Frank Zappa.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Looking for music performed on a flooded grand piano (filled with water to just above the strings).


Too bad you kept your piano in the basement. If you had it in the living room it would not have flooded. But you really should have the water pumped out of the basement as soon as possible and dry out the piano. It may be salvageable if it has not been flooded for too long.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Couchie said:


> It's 2015. Some young avant-garde composer must have done this?


And somebody will like it and the same somebody will get very offended if others dislike it in true ah-vahn-guard fashion.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

isorhythm said:


> I...don't think a piano would survive this?


It would if you carefully wrapped the wooden parts in sheets of mylar sealed with duct tape.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

GKC said:


> Fresh water, salt water; what? Salinity factors into the sound and key action.


I doubt salinity has much of an effect on the propagation of sound waves. However, liquids of different viscosity could be tried, perhaps a clean synthetic motor oil such as Royal Purple?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Both of these were designed for legitimate, particulate, artistic reasons where a sound/effect was desired. A flooded piano would produce an overly damped muddy sound that wouldn't distinguish which key was being pressed (i.e. could you tell whether the pianist hit A or B flat?) and therefore wouldn't be a practical use of the piano for musical reasons.


If we wanted to be strictly practical about it, we not be able to do anything but simply buy pianos and press the keys. But that is so 19th century. We are avant-garde!


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

As a physicist...

My intuition is that one would get an unpitched dull bang sound upon pressing the key. Unpitched because the vibration of the piano string would be negligible because it's damped, and a dull bang because one would just hear a hammer press. The lack of pitch makes it unnecessary to have a piano: one could just have any sort of bars or beams in water. Depending on how hard or how many keys one pressed at the same time, one could excite a small sloshing water motion, but one doesn't need to put all the water into the piano to get sloshing water motion, one can use much simpler means.

I encourage useful and creative applications of modified pianos, like Cage's prepared piano, Lucier's magnetic strings, Young's highly exotic septimal tuned piano... but the avant-garde is really not about pointless creativity just for an Emperor's New Clothes circus. There's a reason for every element in an avant-garde piece, from Cage's 4'33" and Water Walk to Ablinger's dialogues between recorded voice and piano.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Luke Harrald: Drowning Piano





_"Inspired by Annea Lockwood's 'Piano Transplants', a piano was submerged in a clear plastic tank and excited in various ways using jets of water and different objects. These improvised sounds were recorded and then remixed for the installation in real-time by computer; the remixed sounds are played through the soundboard of the piano using waterproof piezzo drivers. Hydrophones then pick up the sound of the piano from inside the tank, and project these sounds through speakers to the audience."_


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SeptimalTritone said:


> As a physicist...
> 
> My intuition is that one would get an unpitched dull bang sound upon pressing the key. Unpitched because the vibration of the piano string would be negligible because it's damped, and a dull bang because one would just hear a hammer press. The lack of pitch makes it unnecessary to have a piano: one could just have any sort of bars or beams in water. Depending on how hard or how many keys one pressed at the same time, one could excite a small sloshing water motion, but one doesn't need to put all the water into the piano to get sloshing water motion, one can use much simpler means.
> 
> I encourage useful and creative applications of modified pianos, like Cage's prepared piano, Lucier's magnetic strings, Young's highly exotic septimal tuned piano... but the avant-garde is really not about pointless creativity just for an Emperor's New Clothes circus. There's a reason for every element in an avant-garde piece, from Cage's 4'33" and Water Walk to Ablinger's dialogues between recorded voice and piano.


And yet the more the water-filled piano practically doesn't work, arguable the stronger the artistic statement. Is humanity not a water-filled piano? The potential for such beauty and greatness, but drenched and muted by social institutions?

Profound stuff.

_"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless."_ - Oscar Wilde


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

tortkis said:


> Luke Harrald: Drowning Piano
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks so much! This is great! It sounds very plucky and stringy due to the damping, but I wonder if the hydrophones are necessary to pick up the plucky pitched sounds... they might be (i.e. the naked ear can't hear it). That's of course not an artistic pejorative, but just a technical observation. It sounded nice though.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

"All art is totally gay"

- Oscar Wilde


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Some contextual background:








*Polanski*: Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Men_and_a_Wardrobe








*Annea Lockwood*: Piano Burning (1968)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annea_Lockwood
_"Annea Lockwood's Piano Burning involved putting small contact microphones inside of a piano, splashing kerosene on it, and setting it on fire, amplifying the sound of the instrument burning"._








Annea Lockwood: Piano Drowning (1972)
_"Find a shallow pond with a clay/other hard bed in an isolated place. Slide upright piano into position vertically, just off-shore. Anchor the piano against storms, e.g. by rope to strong stakes. 
Take photographs and play it monthly, as it slowly sinks."_
(http://www.annealockwood.com/compositions/pianotransplants.htm)








Annea Lockwood: Southern Exposure (1982)
_"Chain a ship's anchor to the back leg of a grand piano. Set the piano at the high tide mark, lid raised. Leave it there until it vanishes."_









*Jane Campion*: The Piano (1993)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Piano

*Drowning The Piano *- a Mussorgsky concerto by Andsnes (2010): 
_"Andsnes describes the marriage of art forms as "a bit of an impossible project, but also very challenging". No challenge was as great as the moment Rhode had to jump in the water to film the climactic drowning of the piano for The Great Gate Of Kiev. "If I didn't get in Leif Ove would have thrown me," says Rhode. "It was an extremely painful experience. Whenever I went underwater it felt as if nails were being hammered into my face. It was absolutely unbearable."_http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/drowning-the-piano-a-marriage-of-music-and-art


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Thank you, joen_cph, especially for the *Annea Lockwood: Piano Burning (1968)*. I wish you had advised earlier in my previous thread, Compositions in which pianos are destroyed.

Anybody kind enough to enlighten me as to the existence of piano-destroying fetishism online communities?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Looking for music performed on a flooded grand piano (filled with water to just above the strings).


I predict that in two or three years time you will ask for music performed on an inside out piano ln a boat made from bubble wrap which sinks into a pit of lava after 12.362784728739 hours.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Several companies make acrylic pianos with metal frames. If one were to replace the few remaining wooden components with plastic ones and use synthetic damper felt attached with waterproof adhesive, there's no reason why a fully waterproof piano couldn't be built.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

You could use it in Schubert's Quintet in A Major, with some real Trout inside the piano.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

SeptimalTritone said:


> We have piano with magnetic strings, where electromagnets induce the piano's magnetic strings to spontaneously vibrate, allowing us to hear a more pure and long lasting waveform without the "initial hammering and subsequent decay" of a normally played piano.


Sorry to ask a serious question in this thread, but could you point me to music on a piano with magnetic strings?


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Couchie said:


> All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde





Richannes Wrahms said:


> "All art is totally gay"
> - Oscar Wilde


"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit." - Oscar Wilde


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

waldvogel said:


> You could use it in Schubert's Quintet in A Major, with some real Trout inside the piano.


... and the listeners may go fishing while listening.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

mmsbls said:


> Sorry to ask a serious question in this thread, but could you point me to music on a piano with magnetic strings?


Thanks so much mmsbls for asking this! Check out Alvin Lucier.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Maybe a piano reduction of Act 1 of Das Rheingold? Believe all the action is underwater. Wagner doesn't tell us how Alberich survives without a breathing system, or how he sings with his lungs full of water. Guess that's what they mean when they talk about "suspension of disbelief."


Aw, now, Ken! Did you think Nibelungs were..._real?_

OMG. You did, didn't you.


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