The unprepared piano

The unprepared piano

by William Schaeffer

The unprepared piano is an idea that occurred accidentally, but is a natural philosophical consequence of my experience with art and music.

The unprepared piano is a simple concept.    You play and record a piano exactly as you find it --without preparing, tuning, or modifying the piano in any way.   The recording is a snapshot in space and time of the history of that piano and room.

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There are many philosophical reasons why this is a valid musical concept.

1. It is easy and inexpensive.  You don't have to pay a piano tuner, or a piano technician.  You play the piano just "as it is."   If it is perfect in tune, that is great.  If it is out of tune, that may be better.  If it is broken, that might be the best?

2. It is honest.  What you see is what you get.  In this age of pitch tuned vocals, digital sampling, and three dimensional sound design, it is nice to hear something that you know is authentic and true.  The slight imperfections in any particular piano make it uniquely real and genuine.

3. It is artistic.  As a found object exercise it is perfect DADA expression.

4. It is philosophical.  In western well tempered tuning systems the 3rds and 6ths are about 25% out of tune compared to just intonation.  That is the philosophical trade off that was made.  However, if your piano is irregularly and somewhat randomly out of tune, there may be a key, or keys that are more perfectly "in tune" with the just intoned scale.  The out-of-tuneness may make a unique rhythmic or timbral accent to the music.

The Japanese have a concept called Wabi that might be translated as "beautiful imperfection."  The unprepared piano could manifest that principle.

5. It is fun.  Most "serious musicians" are familiar with John Cage and his compositional experiments and his "prepared piano" concept.   Many love his ideas, but many only grudgingly accept his work into the corpus of "Classical Music" without really liking it.   The unprepared piano is a humorous reference to that work.

6. It is spiritual.  A piano might be a psychic recording device that stores up the spiritual or psychic energy that manifests in its presence.  A room where much conflict and discord has occurred might cause the piano to go more unpleasantly, or irritatingly, out of tune.  A room where more peaceful, altruistic, compassionate, and sympathetic interactions have occurred might cause the piano to have a more beautiful and refined sound over time.

I am reminded of the saints whose bodies do not experience decay after death and are preserved in a strange state of perfection.   Occasionally, I play a piano that has remained almost perfectly in tune and is a pleasure to play even if it has not been tuned in years.  Those pianos are almost always in a pleasant and still environment that doesn't get much foot traffic or bustle of humans.

7. It just happens.

The first CD that I knowing published with an unprepared piano was "Thirty per cent Blues" with Mark Paulk on percussion and singing.  We had not intended on recording music, but it was a beautiful day and we were both unemployed.  Mark asked me to play the piano and then we recorded a few jams.  More recently, I published "Broken Piano Blue."  This was recorded on a piano that was actually broken and missing strings.  This certainly would be an unprepared piano, I would think.

Someday there might be concerts of unprepared pianos, where the pianos are carefully aged, or preserved, to highlight their unique "out of tune" characteristics.

So the next time you are recording with an old piano and you cannot afford a piano tuner, or you are too lazy or there is no time, just tell yourself that you are a modern piano artist and you are playing an unprepared piano.  I do it all the time.

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"Anyone can play a prepared piano --
but it takes a real man to play an unprepared piano." - Mr Atwater


"The piano was unprepared for what I did to it." - Mr Atwater


"I'd rather play an unprepared piano, than an unprepared potato." - Mr Atwater

copyright (c) 2015

William Schaeffer