Sympathetic piano

 

The Turkish sound engineer Gökhan Deneç has developed a sympathetic resonance system for a grand piano, using electromagnets and feedback through its strings. The electromagnets are placed in the piano and hung approximately 2 mm above the strings which are attracted and repelled by the magnetic fields caused by them. By sending the same signal through all electromagnets, each piano string will start to vibrate by sympathetic vibrations and feedback.

This concept was elaborated at Istanbul Technical University Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM).

”My first intention was to create feedback to excite the piano strings and then by manipulating it I would create textures. […] The sound creation is realised in PureData; there is a generative algorithm that I designed to create a very specific type of sound world. […] What you hear in the video is the generated tones that are created to vibrate the piano strings and because of its nature, they are unique in their own time. I can not repeat the same sounds, there are tons of randomization going on to construct this generativeness.”  Gökhan Deneç