Feb 2022 soundtrack piano experimental instrumental one-take improvisation
Not what the title may suggest.
During tonight's FAWMtalk I was reminded about the sampled Pripyat Pianos sound library for Kontakt. These pianos are the real pianos left after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A team went in and sampled them! Wearing full radiation gear.
This little experiment is me vamping a bunch of chords while "aging" the piano from 1986 until 2019. Yes. They sampled the pianos as they deteriorated due to neglect and weathering. And the recording environment for this one was the concert hall in Medical Unit 126.
Purely an experiment on my part. I'm going to try to incorporate the pianos into a proper tune, but I need to get a feel for them. I bought the samples but couldn't run them on my old music PC. And I forgot I'd got them until tonight.
Instrumental.
If anyone wants this stem to play with, let me know!
Here's more about the samples:
33 years of harsh weather conditions and radiation, 33 years of silence, 33 years of hopeless expectation of human touch. PRIPYAT Pianos is a sound museum, created 33 years after a massive man-made disaster that has affected hundreds of thousands of lives. This is the mark of the elapsed time.
Radioactive Pianos from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
For seven years Strix Instruments' team has made more than 25 trips to the city of Pripyat for a detailed collection of audio materials. Strix Instruments found and recorded 20 instruments in various parts of Pripyat that are of different levels of preservation and functionality. This amount of instruments was necessary to create a tool suitable not only for sound design but also for writing compositions.
Strix Instruments' goal was to create a virtual instrument that will show the nature of the degradation of instruments under the effects of harsh weather conditions and radiation, yet which also would have the purest sound. All the pianos Strix Instruments could find participated in the creation of the final sound.
@dreamscuba Mar 2022
What a great experiment using these samples of the piano deterioration. Lovely playing.
@cblack Feb 2022
I love the idea of sampling radioactive pianos. Sounds like a superhero origin story!
@spazsquatch Feb 2022
Pleasing experiment and the aging is an interesting idea. Such a fascinating story about the pianos, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
@pippa Feb 2022
Fascinating story, and a weird sad sound of pianos left to disintegrate. You capture the disintegration in the music too.
@donna Feb 2022
Love the title. The piece is actually quite poignant (and I'm a sucker for 'poignant' :) ). I especially loved the backstory. I lived and taught in Kyiv for a couple of years after the explosion. One of my adult English-language students was the very young (25 years old) widow of a musician (a violinist) who, with his orchestra), had performed in Chernobyl the night of the explosion. The orchestra was still in the city when it happened. Back in Kyiv, the violinist (and the rest of the musicians) died of radiation poisoning within days. Perhaps one of those pianos belonged to that orchestra.
@woodhornhank Feb 2022
Really interesting concept.This tells so much without lyrics.
Thank for sharing.
@heliosonorous Feb 2022
Interesting piece, it has a slow reflective sound that goes with the piano sound itself, curious what else you may make with this!
@mandolinda Feb 2022
Such an interesting experiment, a bit of archaeology and some science. I lived 20 km away from a nuclear generating station for 35 years. I never did glow but I had a dosimeter.
@jayjay Feb 2022
Wow. Incredible story.
@sph Feb 2022
The sample library is so cool. I bought it because of the story. They need a tune where they fit.
@kenmattsson Feb 2022
Wow. The piano sound felt like it was almost speaking in pain. Very interesting concept! Nicely put together.
@crutherford Feb 2022
this is incredibly cool.
@fuzzy Feb 2022
Whoa, great story!
Lovely experiment, what with the pianos slowly growing older.
Now I'm wondering who had the idea to sample those things?
Great piece here.
@richaaaay Feb 2022
So fascinating. I kept expecting to hear dramatic change start to finish, which there was but it crept up on me slowly so it was hard to fully discern what was happening. After the song was over I jumped back and forth from the beginning to the end a number of times. That's when I could really hear and appreciate the degradation of all those pianos. This was cool...