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Musical Sculpting CD
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Musical Sculpting CD
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Musical Sculpting - A new way to record the piano
Musical Sculpting is a new approach to recording classical music that is fundamentally different from the way music has been performed and recorded in the pre-computer age. In Musical Sculpting notes are recorded one musical line at a time, and then shaped into phrases on a computer that can trigger the keys of a real acoustic piano. Every aspect of the performance can be controlled, reshaped, and re-balanced while listening to the piano responding to the changes in real-time.
For the musician, the process offers freedom from the limitation of what the human hand can or cannot do. For the listener, a Musical Sculpting recording provides an experience of crystal clarity, where each line is given its due independence and integrity as envisioned by the composer. This is particularly useful in the rendering of complex polyphonic works such as the works of J.S.Bach.
How it works
The Yamaha Disklavier reproducing piano is an acoustic piano connected to a computer. The computer can accurately record the motion of the keys and pedals and then play back the recording by triggering the keys and pedals precisely as they were originally played. The piano uses MIDI, a computer protocol designed in the early 1980s that allows communication between musical instruments.
Using MIDI
Perhaps the greatest innovation of
MIDI was
splitting up musical performances into their constituent parts
(parameters),
and allowing each parameter to be manipulated independently. You can
think
of these performance parameters as a series of questions. Which keys
did
the pianist play, and in what order? When was each key struck relative
to
a steady timeline? What was the tone color of the notes (piano as
opposed
to an oboe)? How loudly or softly was each key struck? How long was
each
key held?
In a live performance these and other parameters happen simultaneously and most people perceive them as a single continuous and indivisible phenomenon. Until the appearance of MIDI, performance parameters were indeed indivisible. If a performer wanted to change just one parameter in a performance, say the length of a single note, the only choice was to play the entire phrase again. Needless to say that by that time all the other parameters got changed as well. This interdependence of performance parameters is inherent in real-time playing and puts a great limitation on the interpretation of musical works.
Even before the invention of MIDI, popular music started to overcome the limitations of real-time playing by a technique called "multi-tracking". In a multi-tracking recording each line of a musical composition could be recorded independently. This innovation would have probably been well suited to classical music had it not been for one major problem. Unlike popular music, which adheres to a steady predictable beat, classical music is fluid by nature. Without a steady reference there would be no way to record classical music line by line without making it sound unmusical.
MIDI offered a solution to the first of these two problems. It allowed individual parameters to be changed without affecting the rest of the performance. Although this capability has been available for twenty years it is still rarely used in classical music. Musical Sculpting now solves the second problem, how to record individual lines that do not follow a strict steady beat. Combining these two solutions allows me to create performances that are fluid, expressive and yet completely controlled in each of their parameters.
Why?
I have been asked many times why I prefer the time consuming and analytical process of Musical Sculpting to the good old "keep-practicing-until-you-get-it-right" approach. The simplest answer is that I have no choice. A handicap in my right hand prevents me from playing in real-time. But this is just part of the answer. Even if my hands would fully recover I would not want to go back to the repetitious practicing I used to employ before my injury. I find Musical Sculpting infinitely more interesting. It also allows me to achieve expressive effects and a depth of comprehension that I could never have aspired to with real time practicing.
Musical Sculpting realizes a
vision first formulated by Glenn
Gould almost thirty years ago. It predicted that recordings would
evolve
to become a distinct artistic medium independent of live performance.
In
his words,
"recordings would be to concerts what film is to theatre".
Unfortunately, classical recordings never fulfilled that vision. Today, most classical CDs are still essentially reproductions of live performances. Even the most edited CDs are merely assemblages of different performances played in real time. Musical Sculpting by contrast owes very little to live performance, and is much closer in its methodology to digital art forms.
Having said that, I want to emphasize that I do not view Musical Sculpting as a substitute to live performances. Concerts have qualities that no recording can capture. Rather, I see Musical Sculpting primarily as a recording innovation, with a potential to shed fresh light and generate new insights into the great masterpieces of our musical heritage.
Resistance to Musical Sculpting
Most people who listen to my CDs without knowing in advance how they were made don't detect anything unusual in them. They want to know who the pianist was, assuming that the recording was done in a conventional way. But once listeners are told about the process, conservative notions and suspicion of technology often interfere with objective assessment. The resistance usually centers on two arguments:
- that the process is artificial - because a machine was involved,
- and that it is dishonest because the performance was doctored after the fact.
The machine vs. human argument is a knee jerk reaction of many otherwise intelligent people. Stuart Isacoff, the editor of Piano Today, returned my Art of the Fugue CD unopened with the comment: "I would have nothing to do with anything that uses a computer for classical music". Anything? It may come as a surprise to Mr. Isacoff that a good number of his CDs are mastered and edited on computers. The machine argument is particularly puzzling to me as a pianist, since the piano itself is clearly a machine. I fail to see where the line is drawn between a collection of springs and levers and a collection of circuit boards.
The second argument, that any tampering with a recording after the fact is somehow dishonest, is even more puzzling. Practically all "real-time" recordings today are artificially assembled from countless repetitive takes in the studio. These inserts, as they are called, are often no longer than a single note recorded out of context, and often edited by technicians, not by the artist. How is such an artificial assemblage of bits of recorded music more honest than shaping an entire performance from the ground up on a computer?
I trust that in time classical music will undergo a similar
transformation
to the one that changed classical theater from a museum art to a
vibrant,
ever changing, and widely appreciated art form. As in theater,
technology
will play a major role in that transformation. From Cristofori to
Edison,
machines have always propelled music in unexpected directions. The
sooner
classical audiences accept this fact the sooner our musical landscape
will
open up to interesting new ways of interpreting the old classics.
In the Spring of 1966 Glenn Gould wrote an article for High Fidelity Magazine in which he laid out a bold vision for the future of recorded music, in essence predicting the emergence of a new musical art form. The article summed up Gould's entire artistic credo and prophesied an approach to electronic recording that only recently, twenty years after his death, has become feasible thanks to advances in computer technology and the Disklavier Pro reproducing piano.
(Photo: Glenn Gould in 1974 at a CBC studio)
A personal note:
As a teenager, I came under the spell of Glenn Gould, to the chagrin of my wonderful teacher Edith Kraus (a student of Artur Schnabel). A few years later I ended up studying in Toronto, not realizing at first that Gould actually lived there (I always assumed that he lived in New York or LA, like everyone else). By good fortune our paths eventually crossed many times and I had the privilege of working with him on several projects.
When after a 20 year career as a concert pianist and technologist I succumbed to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my right hand, I decided to put into practice some of the concepts I heard Gould talk about. Necessity, in this case, was truly the mother of invention.
Peter Elyakim Taussig
The National Post (Canada) 6/20/01 - When a Pianist's Hands Stop Working
The Berkshire Eagle 7/6/01 - Lenox Pianist Embraces High Tech
Arts4All ezine - Musical Sculpting: The Emergence of a New Art Form
Reviews of The Art of the Fugue CD:
- Classical Net - Robert Cummings
- Music Web - Kirk Mcelhearn
- Classical Net - Raymond Tuttle
- The J.S.Bach Web Site - Jan Hanford
- The American Record Guide - Nov./Dec. 2001 issue, P.67
The Artful Mind - Peter Taussig: Musical Transformation
Musical Sculpting® is a registered trademark
of
Taussig Media & Technology,
Disklavier-Pro® is a registered trademark of the Yamaha Corporation
of America
©Copyright, Taussig Media & Technology, 2000
Photos: James Steeber