Pretty much as played live at female:pressure Perspectives Festival on September 13, 2013, ://about blank, Berlin - just slightly shortened and a bit revised...

All new material from my forthcoming album. These tracks reflect what I've been working on in the past couple of years. Most of the sounds are generated from recorded voice and other sounds using granular synthesis - Robert Henke's Granulator, to be more specific.

Electric Indigo - solo live demo 2013

I got two littleBits Korg synth kits in the mail today. This is playing around with them. I used the sequencer module, two oscillators, two filters, two delays (one is before the envelope on one of the oscillators), one envelope generators positioned after the filters as VCA envelope, and a mix module. Recorded directly into audacity with no other processing.

I didn't change the sequence during play because those pots are really temperamental. I haven't made peace with them yet in a way where landing on a specific note (without accidentally disconnecting the power and resetting the whole thing) is happening. Maybe the pegboard from littleBits (the one shown on the box, but not included) will help.

littleBits Korg Synth Kit First Try

Crazy resonance sound effects. 

Logically two synthesizers in use here.

Patch included two oscillators in series used to modulate the filter applied to a third oscillator. 

The second synth had another oscillator with a noise source before its input voltage and then had a sequencer modulating its filter. 

Each synth had its own delay which then fed into the mixer and then the output module.

Crazy sounds abound. Recorded directly into Audacity with no effects other than the littleBits themselves.

littlebits / Korg Synth Crazy Resonance Sound Effects

My friend Ralf Reber played this beautiful piece on the Una Corda Piano today. It is a pretty decent sound example regarding the basic characteristics of this new piano sound. Any comments welcome, feel free to speak from your heart..! :-)

This is the piano commissioned by my dear friend Nils Frahm.

Una Corda Piano Sound Sample - Prelude b minor Bach / Siloti

Recorded as an Improvisation. Single take, no overdubs.

'Wall' is taken from the new album by Nils Frahm – 'Solo'. Revealed on Piano Day as a free download and available on CD/LP/DL via www.pianoday.org

Fans can donate to the special piano project which will enable Nils and piano builder David Klavins to create the Klavins M450, the tallest piano in the world.

“Why does the world need a Piano Day? For many reasons. But mostly, because it doesn’t hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.” – Nils Frahm

HOW WILL YOU CELEBRATE PIANO DAY?

create your own piano events with friends or simply share your videos, poems, photos - anything that is piano inspired. don’t forget to tag us in your posts!

Instagram – #pianodayofficial
Twitter – twitter.com/piano__day
Facebook – facebook.com/pages/Piano-Day/382403391947996
Email – share your fun stuff with info@pianoday.org


Solo

Wall

Free DL + Buy LP/CD

This is my crazy arrangement of All the Things as performed by the amazing One O'Clock Lab Band of UNT, featured as the first track of Lab 2015!  This has been submitted for grammy nomination, so please get the word out if you enjoyed this track!  

Soloists: Daniel Matthews, trumpet
Mark Hartsuch, tenor sax
Connor Kent, drum set
Nick Rothouse, congas

All the Things You Are

Cover artwork by Melanie Kretzer
Mastered by David Georgos

RISE! PANIC!

Pre-order Peter's 'Grunewald' EP – out December 9 – on 10"/CD/DL here: phonofile.link/grunewald

Not long after the release of Peter Broderick’s seventh solo album ‘Partners’, the composer closes 2016 with his equally exceptional ‘Grunewald’ recordings, out on December 9th via Erased Tapes.

Born in just one night inside the four walls of the discrete yet majestic Grunewald Church, situated on the outskirts of Berlin, this five-track EP is an exploration of the alluring partnership between the acoustic space and Broderick's solo performance on piano and violin. Reflecting the grandeur of the room and the natural interaction between the instruments and their surrounding environment, 'Grunewald' pays homage to a very unusual space that's become a haven for an entire generation of contemporary composers.


Words from Peter, October 2016:


“In the few years between 2008 and 2011 or so, the Grunewald Church in Berlin was something of a hotspot for a group of us musicians. It started when Nils scouted it as a location in which to record The Bells . . . and then it seemed like we were in there every month or two for a while, either for recordings or for concerts.

There was a lady living just down the street from the church, and we’d just knock on her door, give her a couple hundred euros, and then she’d hand over the keys to the church! To be given unsupervised access in a space like that is really quite unheard of most of the time… For anyone who likes reverb, the Grunewald is a dream come true. That in combination with the beautiful old Bösendorfer piano made it the perfect place for both recording and performing.

When mixing the recordings that comprise this EP, simply titled Grunewald in homage to that old haven of ours, there were no artificial reverbs or delays used . . . only the natural sound of that epic space. Originally these piano recordings were released as part of a split album on a small Japanese label, and the violin piece was included on a compilation, also Japanese . . . but all these pieces were recorded on the same night, in the same space, and it is with great pleasure that I see them reunited for this release.”

TRACK LISTING:

1. Goodnight
2. Low Light
3. Violin Solo No.1
4. It’s A Storm When I Sleep
5. Eyes Closed And Traveling

www.peterbroderick.net · www.erasedtapes.com

Grunewald

Peter Broderick - It's A Storm When I Sleep

For alto saxophone and piano with electromagnets
Performed by the Kenners (Eliot Gattegno, saxophone; Eric Wubbels, Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano)
(Note: this is an earlier recording than the one included on the Tzadik release.)

Of Dust and Sand uses the Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano device, a rack of 12 electromagnets which is suspended over the strings of a piano. Each electromagnet is sent an audio signal and in turn excites its respective string, much like a stereo speaker made from piano strings. In this piece a subset of the magnets remains active throughout, the performer physically silencing the strings by pressing down with fingertips. Thus the instrument becomes a kind of anti-piano – lifting a finger frees a string to vibrate, producing sound. In addition, various items, such as paper and a plastic ruler, rest directly on the strings further altering the timbre. Remember – everything you hear is entirely acoustic.

While working on this piece I was deeply immersed in the novel Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann. The title is in part drawn from an image that recurs throughout the novel, that of the hourglass of mortality, which Mann in turn drew from the etchings of Albrecht Dürer. The material of the piece is connected with the novel, though in ways so tenuous as to escape relevance. 

Of Dust and Sand is dedicated to The Kenners.

Of Dust and Sand

Evolutionary Algorithmic Granulation based on three motives from the 1981 game "Galaga," realized in Pd (PureData). All pitched materials are based on the first 16 partials of the overtone series.

The evolutionary algorithm used here is also known as the "Dawkins Weasel" or "Methinks it is like a weasel" algorithm, in which the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins posits that "the preservation of small changes in an evolving string of characters (or genes) can produce meaningful combinations in a relatively short time as long as there is some mechanism to select cumulative changes, whether it is a person identifying which traits are desirable (in the case of artificial selection) or a criterion of survival ("fitness") imposed by the environment (in the case of natural selection)."  

The characters in this composition, consist of the sound particles generated from the aforementioned three Galaga motives, and the performer is the artificial selector. Written in Lewiston, ME.

Galaga-Prelude

Reiner Krämer

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