Re:zen and the fluent music-Cage

["loop.pool" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Andy wrote:
"wow, Can't believe you don't love the prepared piano stuff.
..............kind of gamelan mutates into Eric Satie....."


Oh, my bad, Andy.   I LOVE THE PREPARED PIANO STUFF TO DEATH!!!!!!
Am I shouting?   Why yes, I am.   Seriously,  it has had an enormous 
impact 
on the way
I play music.   I am so into 'preparing' anything from traditional trapset 
drums (where i have
tried every single type of substance to get alternate sounds out of drum 
heads and cymbals)
to my toy guitars and basses.

My latest thing was inspired by a very, very young and brilliant student, 
Elias, who is the son of
the wonderfully talented couple Rick (made custom guitars for everyone 
from 
Linsdey Buckingham to Prince) and Jessica Turner (a wonderful child 
musical 
educator)  he asked me about
a couple of piezo pickups that I bought for cheap for triggering samples 
from acoustic drums.
He took the piezo , turned up loud and then held it against one of my 
beautiful resonant brass candy dishes so that the pick up itself was the 
vibrating resonator. The vibration of the bowl 'buzzes' the 
pickup...........add to that the feedback from amp proximity and you can 
play both that resonance (hold it harder agains the bowl and the buzzes 
are 
more frequent, away and they slow down and last longer) and the feedback 
which both interact.
It's hard to control but I want to just improvise for a half an hour and 
then cut it all up and loop it in the computer.  He's got me trying this 
technique with all kinds of sounds now, including the new 
Door-Stop-A-Phone 
that my father just built me  (9 different sized door stoppers on a 
resonator/guitar like body).

Yeah,  the prepared piano stuff................so cool.

Matter of fact, there was a very creative artist owned warehouse in Santa 
Cruz for a long time and they had a huge and very fucked up sounding board 
from an ancient grand piano.
They just had it standing up against one wall and I use to love going in 
their and 'playing' it.
I always wanted to record a piece on it but the city tore the damn thing 
down before I could.

Yeah,  the prepared piano stuff.   how could I forget that stuff?

Like you say, Reich meets gamelan.