detuning a tuning
Date
2023-02-11
Authors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
ISSN
DOI
Volume Title
Publisher
Carpal Tunnel
Type
Recording, musical
Peer reviewed
Abstract
You wake up in the middle of the night. In your dream, you lived along with other creatures inside a huge piano. The piano was being tuned and detuned at the same time. Strings snapped, and large pieces were breaking off, making a range of screeching, banging and scratching noises, with the occasional note. There were some voices outside, and you worried about finding a new place to live. You remember playing the piano as a kid, and wonder how it would be to take it again, then go back to sleep. detuning a tuning by Anna Xambó was released on 11 February 2023 by Carpal Tunnel.
Description
detuning a tuning explores the sonic boundaries between tuning and detuning. The aural expedition consists of deconstructing audio recordings of Greg Chryssopoulos tuning a Kawai RX-6 grand piano at the School of Music, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA, recorded in February 2017. The album explores algorithmic music composition using SuperCollider with spectral modelling synthesis, mainly using the FluCoMa library for the latter. The recorded tuning process is listened to by self-built algorithms and used to control an abstract synthesiser. This process generates an organic evocative "décollage" of textural sounds merged with
the recordings. The piano was Anna Xambó’s first musical instrument to learn, but the framework behind the classical piano lessons made it challenging to think outside the box. This album is an original contribution to other ways of seeing the piano, from
observing the first and often unseen part of the process: the tuning.
a0 (06:45)
traces (07:12)
together (02:41)
residual (07:14)
triads (06:30)
decollage (04:22)
clock (05:20)
emergence (03:43)
creatures (06:05)
Author: Anna Xambó
Mastering: Gerard Roma
Artwork: Carpal Tunnel
(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Anna Xambó Sedó
Keywords
experimental, live electronics, glitch
Citation
Xambó, A. (2023) detuning a tuning. FLAC/MP3 files]. Barcelona (Spain) / Kettering (UK): Carpal Tunnel.