The piano is a percussion instrument, right? Perhaps the answer is not as clear cut as you might imagine.  With the addition of electromagnet actuators placed over the strings of a piano, the Magnetic Resonator Piano (MRP) can play the strings without the physical strike of a hammer.  This remarkable innovation was created by Dr. Andrew McPherson in the MET-lab at Drexel University and it’s still under active development.  A “beta” version will be used to play new music created specifically for the MRP by local composers during two concerts this weekend.  Don’t miss this opportunity to witness and hear music at the leading edge of development.

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011; 7PM Mitchell Auditorium (Bossone building), Drexel University, 3120 Market St., Philadelphia, PA

Sunday, December 4th, 2011, 3PM Rock Hall, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

Program

• David Carpenter - Job, for baritone and MRP
• William Derganc - Play, for violin and MRP
• Daniel Fox - Intermezzo, for MRP
• Daniel Shapiro - The Masons of Heidelberg, for MRP
• Jeff Snyder - Fantasy, for MRP
• Tony Solitro - Spectra of Morning, for MRP

      Performed by:

• Feifei Zhang, piano
• Eric Wubbels, piano
• Katya Popova, piano
• Lawrence Indik, baritone
• Noco Kawamura, violin

Why mess with success?

 Why tinker with such a widely known and successful instrument?  Though the piano has a wide range of expression, it is limited in a few very basic ways.  Like most percussive instruments, sounds cannot be altered after the initial strike - other than stopping the vibration.  Other instruments allow musicians to increase the volume of sounds, add vibrato, and more, even after the note has sounded.  

What is the Magnetic Resonator Piano?

 McPherson describes his invention as - “The magnetic resonator piano is a hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument augmenting the traditional grand piano. Sound is produced without loudspeakers using electromagnetic actuators to directly manipulate the piano strings, expanding its vocabulary to include infinite sustain, notes that crescendo from silence, harmonics, and new timbres.”

The sound produced by the magnetic resonators is also different from that of felt covered hammers striking the strings.  Though all the sounds are produced entirely by the strings, the capabilities introduced by the resonators provide a whole new dimension of sound to the standard acoustic piano.  The best way to understand it, however, is to see and hear it in action:

While the keyboard you see in this video is a standard piano keyboard, a modified Moog Piano Bar is installed to detect other finger actions.  Actions other than a standard strike of a key are programmed to activate the resonators for various effects.  The effects may be altered for each piece of music, and McPherson worked with the composers to custom program the sounds that they wished for their individual compositions.  A second keyboard may also be installed that is used exclusively with the resonators.  

The whole system can be installed on any grand piano without permanent modification of the instrument.  Each installation requires alignment work to make sure each resonator is above each set of strings and that the Moog Piano Bar is fully functional.  

Composing:  New challenges for a new instrument

Composers pull off amazing feats of intelligence and skill on a regular basis.  Not only do they create music from thin air but they must understand the instruments for which they’re composing well enough to fully know their limitations and the capabilities of the musicians who will perform their pieces.  The task is even more daunting when the composer does not play that particular instrument - which is often the case in the world of classical music.  The MRP raises the bar even higher because their is no existing literature on which to rely to understand it’s capabilities.  Not only that, but standard musical notation may not contain the vocabulary necessary to fully describe how to play the piece.

So how does a composer begin?  Well, the first challenge is learning how to play the instrument and understand it’s capabilities.  McPherson noted that even he did not anticipate some of the techniques and variations that the composers used when they had a chance to sit down and explore the new instrument.  Once their limited time in the lab was over the composers created their pieces and then worked with McPherson to program the resonator settings to control their behavior much like an organist would do to setup the registration of an organ prior to a concert.  The programming did not always cover all the variations required, so special notation was created to instruct the pianist on actions that would not be possible on a standard piano.  For example, diamond notes heads were sometimes use to denote no-hammer key presses, while one composer indicated these notes with a “n.h.” in his score.  Surprisingly, standard notation was all that was needed in most cases, though playing a piece on the MRP produced different results than a standard pianos.  McPherson described this in more detail - “Some basic information on the resonator behavior is included in the notated score, but some of the details are left to the software implementation. The pianist plays the notes at the right time (and with the right kind of touch) and the right sounds happen. The purpose is to take some of the load off the pianist, who already has plenty to worry about, while still leaving the important expressive controls in her hands.”

Composer's experience with the MRP

Composer, Daniel Fox, described this ability of the MRP to use standard notation with new capabilities - “Part of the success of Andrew's design is that one can use traditional notation while taking advantage of the extended techniques made available by the system of magnets.  For example, the unlimited sustain can be used by simply writing in the desired duration of the note.  On a traditional piano a held note quickly loses all but its atmospheric power.  On the MRP, the ability of a held note to ring out and sustain its power, even to crescendo, is an exciting new feature of the instrument.  It is a musical gesture that we are all familiar with from other instruments and so requires little or no modification in notation and technique.”  Fox went on to describe how the MRP was capable of a wide range of sounds due to it’s ability to precisely control the harmonics on a string, and how he approached his writing for the instrument - “I wrote for an idealized piano that has lost none of its old virtues, but has gained the ability of infinite sustain, to crescendo on a fixed note, and to sound a pitch with a percussion-less attack.  Andrew has brought such an idealized piano into existence.”

Composer, William Derganc, described his first encounter with the MRP - “It was an hour long session jam-packed with information about the instrument's function and overall sound world. It soon became clear that writing for this instrument was more about deciding what not to do, rather than what to do. There was such a wide variety of options that I decided to focus in on just a few and utilize them in many different ways. There is a real danger in writing too many extended techniques for a new instrument.”  He would have liked to have had more time to work with the instrument, but said “Most composers don't have the luxury of conducting orchestras everyday, or playing each string instrument in a string quartet, so it is fine to just imagine what might happen.”  Composers routinely take their best shot at what they think will work with an instrument that they don’t play, and modify the results if it turns out that it’s simply not possible.

Derganc supplied two examples from his score that demonstrate how the MRP differs from a standard piano:

Example 1:

"The first image is from the beginning where the right hand starts to resonate after the note was already struck by the hammer. The computer timed the note here to crescendo as indicated at the approximate time. This is the first and last time resonance is used until the very end of the piece. I wanted to plant a seed in the listener's mind for later on."



Example 2:

"Here we are at the very end of the piece. We just came from a long section of music that used resonance without any hammer attack at all.  After resonance + hammers in bar 156, we have a single note with no resonance at all (bar 157). After this note drifts away almost entirely, it is brought back with resonance to close the piece."

What enhancements are under development?

The next version of the MRP is expected to include multi-point pressure sensitive key tops that will replace the modified Moog Piano Bar.  These key tops would greatly expand the ability to detect gestures and pressures on the keys that could be programmed to activate various resonator effects.  Here is an example of the key tops on a fully electronic keyboard:



The effects demonstrated in this video are far wider than those that could be achieved via the resonators since all the sounds are produced electronically.  

What is the future of the MRP?

McPherson states, “It's very important to me that the magnetic resonator piano has a future beyond my own personal music-making. There are lots of great new interfaces and instruments out there, but many of them are usable by at most one or two people, so they never see their full potential.”  It is unlikely that a specialty instrument such as the MRP will ever gain the popularity required for mass production, but a small scale production run could be quite possible.  Only two MRP systems exist today, but, hopefully, you will be able to special order your own system some time in the future.

References:

http://music.ece.drexel.edu/research/mrp

http://andrewmcpherson.org/research.html