The harp: it’s big. It’s temperamental. It’s pretty much associated with an established set of music. And when you hear “MIDI harp,” you’re typically in store for something kind of cheesy involving laser beams.
Not this time, though: this is an actual harp, augmented with MIDI into a pretty wacky one-off one-person instrument.
Time for Throwback Thursday, because I hadn’t seen this before even though it’s rather old. But, maybe unearthing it in this fashion will inspire Arnaud Roy to make something new (or share what he’s been up to lately).
The project is the “HarpJamX” – a conventional acoustic harp with MIDI augmentation. What are we seeing?
This video shows one of the greatest feature of the CAMAC MIDI Harp. When bending on a string, for example with a tuning key, the harp sends a “pitch bend” message. This is because the Midi conversion uses frequency analysis.
Ah, interesting. So you aren’t just using MIDI as a trigger – you’re actually triggering control information via continuous pitch. One common misunderstanding of MIDI is the assumption that it can only handle note relationships found on a keyboard. This simply isn’t true; it’s actually that keyboards assume 12-tone-equal tempered pitch relations, and us being Western musicians and keyboards being easy things to play, they make for good demonstration. But this should indicate that you can treat pitch continuously, both using pitch bend and (if you were to choose to do so) by remapping the tuning of MIDI’s integer note representations, as well.
Got all that? MIDI is more than just white- and black-note keys, to say it more directly.
Here’s another take on musical harps, this time featured in the fall by Motherboard and making use of magnets and a piano. Watch:
Details:
In our final episode of season two of Sound Builders, presented by Harman, we head over to downtown Brooklyn, to spend the day with Andy Cavatorta. He’s an inventor, sculptor, and instrument designer whose latest quest to program robots to make music has led him to the creation of his magnetized piano harp.
Cavatorta is no stranger to building his own instruments. His most recent claim to fame was his role in developing a homespun instrument for experimental musician Björk. In preparation for her 2013 Biophiliia tour, Björk commissioned Cavatorta to build harps that swung like multi-string pendulums and triggered musical patterns from Earth’s gravitational pull.
For his latest musical creation, Andy has mounted a caboodle of magnets onto a piano’s frame. Once the magnets are activated, electromagnetic vibrations pull and release the piano’s steel strings in a bloom of various pitches in harmonic succession. By doing this, Andy has managed to feather dust an instrument that was created many centuries ago and offer it a new sonic vocabulary by tapping into the piano’s uncharted harmonics. Indeed, our exchange between sound and instrument is an ever-evolving one that reminds us that an old dog can indeed learn new tricks.
While excavating new sounds from an old instrument is enough to make an audiophile tinkle his pants, it’s the instrument’s new interfaces and unique dialogue between the tactile and the magnetic player that’s the real kicker. While one player is able to stimulate electromagnets by playing the keyboard, another tactile player can pluck, hammer, and touch the steel strings of the piano harp in order to shape their harmonic nodes and further manipulate the sound.
Here we see how Andy’s multi-player magnetic piano harp can be a standalone instrument, but its inception was originally planned to be a cog in a larger wheel of organized sound. On November 16th at Littlefield in Brooklyn, composer Molly Herron will debut her ​New Music for New Instruments concert in which Andy and his electromagnetic harp will play alongside other instrument builders to create a symphony of sonic delight.
Curious how that concert went…
Other harpy ideas? Harp on.
sigh
Isn’t this how Garry Garritan got his start — midi’d harps? I remember him talking about this like a decade ago (probably more when I use to run into him at NAMM).
Yes, indeed, Gary Garritan (of Garritan Personal Orchestra and Finale) claims to be the first MIDI harpist. I can’t find a specific reference, but I think he was doing this about 20 years ago.
Gary Garritan’s original reason for developing the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample library was so that he could use it to create his own sequenced orchestrations to accompany his harp concerts.
Isn’t this how Garry Garritan got his start — midi’d harps? I remember him talking about this like a decade ago (probably more when I use to run into him at NAMM).
Yes, indeed, Gary Garritan (of Garritan Personal Orchestra and Finale) claims to be the first MIDI harpist. I can’t find a specific reference, but I think he was doing this about 20 years ago.
Gary Garritan’s original reason for developing his first sample library, the Garritan Strings, was so that he could use it personally to create his own sequenced orchestrations to accompany his harp concerts. After that he created the Garritan Harps sample library, and after that, the Garritan Personal Orchestra.
Isn’t this how Garry Garritan got his start — midi’d harps? I remember him talking about this like a decade ago (probably more when I use to run into him at NAMM).
Yes, indeed, Gary Garritan (of Garritan Personal Orchestra and Finale) claims to be the first MIDI harpist. I can’t find a specific reference, but I think he was doing this about 20 years ago.
Gary Garritan’s original reason for developing his first sample library, the Garritan Strings, was so that he could use it personally to create his own sequenced orchestrations to accompany his harp concerts. After that he created the Garritan Harps sample library, and after that, the Garritan Personal Orchestra.
farts and noises….next time : the Steinway piano that “burps”……
farts and noises….next time : the Steinway piano that “burps”……
farts and noises….next time : the Steinway piano that “burps”……
I think all the sounds here can be easily produced with a midi keyboard. So, it seems a bit impractical to use a harp. If this is all about creating a surprising harp-performance, then I would say that the sounds are too disconnected from the harp.
Maybe some people don’t play keyboard instruments. If you already know how to play harp why should you learn piano just to utilize midi?
I think all the sounds here can be easily produced with a midi keyboard. So, it seems a bit impractical to use a harp. If this is all about creating a surprising harp-performance, then I would say that the sounds are too disconnected from the harp.
Maybe some people don’t play keyboard instruments. If you already know how to play harp why should you learn piano just to utilize midi?
I think all the sounds here can be easily produced with a midi keyboard. So, it seems a bit impractical to use a harp. If this is all about creating a surprising harp-performance, then I would say that the sounds are too disconnected from the harp.
Maybe some people don’t play keyboard instruments. If you already know how to play harp why should you learn piano just to utilize midi?
Maybe it’s just me but we seem to be living in an age where everyone insists on making the same music over and over again through an exponentially expanding diversity of instrumental and technological means. Sure, Lev Theremin focused on performing well-known classical repertoire with his invention, but at least the timbre of his theremin was highly distinctive for its time and place. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) forces a turn away from software-induced ubiquitous musical default settings. Sjakelien makes a good point. What seems to start out as an attempt to revitalize a traditional acoustic instrument via technology often seems to end up denying the instrument’s rich sonic character almost entirely.
Well, the fact may very well be that all musical tropes have been discovered already. The synthesizer let us play with the fundamental unit of sound, the sine wave, and by extension allows us to create any and every possible sound.
When you combine that with the avant-garde movement, which let any sound be defined as music, we’ve basically reached the point where every sound has been made, and every sound has been considered music. The only thing left is to explore every possible combination of sonic tropes. It’s not so much that we aren’t making new music, as that we may very well have run out of truly novel musical tropes. All that can be done at this point is rehash them in new ways.
Maybe it’s just me but we seem to be living in an age where everyone insists on making the same music over and over again through an exponentially expanding diversity of instrumental and technological means. Sure, Lev Theremin focused on performing well-known classical repertoire with his invention, but at least the timbre of his theremin was highly distinctive for its time and place. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) forces a turn away from software-induced ubiquitous musical default settings. Sjakelien makes a good point. What seems to start out as an attempt to revitalize a traditional acoustic instrument via technology often seems to end up denying the instrument’s rich sonic character almost entirely.
Well, the fact may very well be that all musical tropes have been discovered already. The synthesizer let us play with the fundamental unit of sound, the sine wave, and by extension allows us to create any and every possible sound.
When you combine that with the avant-garde movement, which let any sound be defined as music, we’ve basically reached the point where every sound has been made, and every sound has been considered music. The only thing left is to explore every possible combination of sonic tropes. It’s not so much that we aren’t making new music, as that we may very well have run out of truly novel musical tropes. All that can be done at this point is rehash them in new ways.
Maybe it’s just me but we seem to be living in an age where everyone insists on making the same music over and over again through an exponentially expanding diversity of instrumental and technological means. Sure, Lev Theremin focused on performing well-known classical repertoire with his invention, but at least the timbre of his theremin was highly distinctive for its time and place. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) forces a turn away from software-induced ubiquitous musical default settings. Sjakelien makes a good point. What seems to start out as an attempt to revitalize a traditional acoustic instrument via technology often seems to end up denying the instrument’s rich sonic character almost entirely.
Well, the fact may very well be that all musical tropes have been discovered already. The synthesizer let us play with the fundamental unit of sound, the sine wave, and by extension allows us to create any and every possible sound.
When you combine that with the avant-garde movement, which let any sound be defined as music, we’ve basically reached the point where every sound has been made, and every sound has been considered music. The only thing left is to explore every possible combination of sonic tropes. It’s not so much that we aren’t making new music, as that we may very well have run out of truly novel musical tropes. All that can be done at this point is rehash them in new ways.
Enough with the buzz feed hyperbole headlines
You sound like one of those guys who gets annoyed when “their” favorite band becomes famous. CDM needs to attract readers or you’re going to be stuck getting your music news from Buzzfeed and regurgitated press releases on other music blogs.
I agree. CDM is better than that.
Enough with the buzz feed hyperbole headlines
You sound like one of those guys who gets annoyed when “their” favorite band becomes famous. CDM needs to attract readers or you’re going to be stuck getting your music news from Buzzfeed and regurgitated press releases on other music blogs.
I agree. CDM is better than that.
Enough with the buzz feed hyperbole headlines
You sound like one of those guys who gets annoyed when “their” favorite band becomes famous. CDM needs to attract readers or you’re going to be stuck getting your music news from Buzzfeed and regurgitated press releases on other music blogs.
I agree. CDM is better than that.
Heh, tough audience, innit?
Anyone whose willing to make a blue alloy harp their synth controller of choice is fine in my book.
Tough crowd indeed.
I wish, for every diss I see on here, there was a button to click for the disser’s work for us all to listen to.
Heh, tough audience, innit?
Anyone whose willing to make a blue alloy harp their synth controller of choice is fine in my book.
Tough crowd indeed.
I wish, for every diss I see on here, there was a button to click for the disser’s work for us all to listen to.
Heh, tough audience, innit?
Anyone whose willing to make a blue alloy harp their synth controller of choice is fine in my book.
Tough crowd indeed.
I wish, for every diss I see on here, there was a button to click for the disser’s work for us all to listen to.
I’ve wanted to incorporate harp in to electronic music for decades now, it is a perfect fit with it’s built in ability for arpeggios.
I’ve wanted to incorporate harp in to electronic music for decades now, it is a perfect fit with it’s built in ability for arpeggios.
I’ve wanted to incorporate harp in to electronic music for decades now, it is a perfect fit with it’s built in ability for arpeggios.