detuning a tuning

Date

2023-02-11

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.

Rights

Research Institute