OLD BROKEN PIANO

For Old Broken Piano we have recorded an old piano manufactured in the 1940s by the brothers Manegold. It has not been maintained and tuned for decades, giving it a unique, dark and nostalgic sound character.

The instrument was recorded with a Sennheiser MKH 8040 Stereo Pair connected to a Sound Devices 702T.

MKH 8040 are microphones with extended frequency response up to 50.000 Hz, which is great if you want to further process, re-pitch or stretch audio files.

Rather unconventional approaches were used to „play“ the piano: Not a single key was touched! It was performed using a violin bow, various mallets and sticks, kitchen utensils, sticky tape and bare hands. The casing of the piano was partly taken apart to get direct access to the strings and the interior components of the instrument.

A wide array of interesting sounds have been achieved by bowing, scraping or hitting single and multiple strings or parts of the wood body. For longer resonances, the sustain pedal was pressed down during almost all recordings.

Old Broken Piano is a collabration between SampleTraxx and german sound designer Sebastian Emling.

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