String Fever

This week I visited the piano with Chris Newman, a Musicology & Ethnomusicology graduate student and guitarist. Chris used a guitar pick to scrape, pluck, and strum the strings through the arched window created by the bowed lid. Through this small opening, Chris could only reach about half of the full range of strings at a time. Scraping the pick parallel to the string so it caught the spiraled grooves in the metal resulted in a metallic grating sound, while plucking some of the strings in the mid-range sent loose dampers jumping about.

The piano's ongoing decomposition "definitely changes how you play it," Chris reflected. "The way the instrument is decomposing is more inviting to extended techniques—not just because it can’t be played in a traditional way, but you don’t feel as much of a need to protect the piano. You still don’t want to break it, it’s fragile, but if something falls off, it’s no big deal."

Days in place: 393

Weather: partly sunny, 54°F