16th Tone Piano

[JNozum]

VERY STRANGE! This sounds like something good for a horror movie. It's very different!

From John Nozum

[jghcky]

beautiful, just like chopin

[dumnuts1]

That's the same sound I heard when one of the guys dropped a load of drain pipes off the third floor.

[Bernardcarrot]

The thing is, it is musical.

[IndighostOfficial]

errrrrr, are you sure the piano isnt just fucked?!

[Co2Und3rground]

Sounds like a dream. A bad dream.

[cheesendfeltips]

shame about the quality, it would of been beautiful otherwise -_-

[awfulguitarplucker]

undecimal major 7th intervals?

[trkmalki]

for me the composer of this piece has no sensibility of the beauty of micro-tones so he imposes the notes in a rational way without any perspective or an intention to create a convincing musical style/vision.

[Parkinson9999]

ouch, my ears...

[bootlegapples]

Keep experimenting and don't be dissuaded,there are new sounds in there and new musical expressions to be made!

[TheHappyFaceBoxMan]

My 3 year old nephew can play that.

[2t22tornadosiren]

I wouldn't pay cents to hear this. Lame musical joke.

[2t22tornadosiren]

this is quite possibly the worst sound i have ever heard

[akamarutv]

@2t22tornadosiren No, playing all 88 keys at once on a 16th tone piano would be much worse ;)

[Hansdampf86]

guys, thank you for all the interesting comments. positiv or negativ, and please go on!

[Wyga23]

Or smashing Derek Bailey on the piano would make similar noise.

[Hansdampf86]

@Wyga23 nice one :-D

[Hobble]

I don't understand why so many people see dissonance as an ugly thing, to me the clash of tones has a very atmospheric sound to it.

[tmagical1]

OMG!!!!! STOP THE NEGATIVE COMMENTS!!!!!!! THIS IS FREAKIN' GENIUS!!!!! IT SOUNDS LIKE AN ATMOSPHERE!!!!!! WHAT'S THE PROBLEM????

[SeReZiN1]

np for the bad quality, the better the worse

[lovesGenet]

one octave from low to highest.For REal? who went thru all trouble of tuning that piano.This music is something .I would like better to hear it with other instruments tuned. Truly there is enough contrast here! Thanks for this post .always interesting!

[juanmaMCMLXXXII]

Hay que estar aburrido para hacerle eso a un piano. Pero está curioso.

[organman52]

This is the best thing since Bach. What a great contribution to the evoluation of musical style !

[GallopingPints]

I love the quater tone stuff, but this is just playing your instrument at the point where you can have it out of tune and claim that it is. Sorry, but that's my 2 cents

[Hobble]

@GallopingPints You should probably study the subject your commenting on at least a little before adding your two cents, if so you'd realize that there's nothing out of tune about it.

[GhostFramez]

Congratulations, you just made a beautiful instrument like the piano sound like shit.

You should be proud.

[Hobble]

@GhostFramez Congratulations, you are in league with all of those in the history of music who dissented to the evolution of music instead of encouraging it, learning from it, and taking part in it.

[GhostFramez]

@Hobble I think it's enough with quarter tones. And, the piano has stayed the same since it was invented and i don't think it needs evolving into anything else. Quarter notes are fine, but if you're gonna experiment, just don't make it sound like crap.

[Hobble]

@GhostFramez Taste is like your butt divided, just because it doesn't suit you doesn't make it sound like crap. The colors are new and unfamiliar which makes it a bit daunting, but new and different things aren't bad just because you haven't acquired the familiarity to enjoy them. I think the example she was playing wasn't very good however, it was too limited to very closed chords, she should have also showed examples of more open sounding voices.

[akamarutv]

@Hobble I think if this guy expierimented, It could sound good, but It'll take some practice, and listening. First he/she should develop some scales to work with then get some chords, start simple with this new unfalmiliar stuff.

[Hobble]

@akamarutv Most definitely. I think this video was just showing a demonstration of how small the intervals are, which is probably why she was playing chords that were made up of very small intervals.

[Hobble]

@GhostFramez But also ETs more than quarter-tones have been used for a very long time. Ancient Byzantine music was based on a 72-tone ET system, Much Middle Eastern, Asain, and African music has been using intervals smaller than quarter tones in well established systems for longer than European classical music has existed.

[Albana132]

its like shes telling a horror story by just making awful sounds... :S

[Hufflewaffle]

lost at sea

[rofklaw]

this is really not up to the same quality as a lot of microtonal music. And i don't mean in terms of recording quality i mean general organization. It just sounds really un-planned.

[JLMoriart]

It's cool to experiment, but I have to admit that I hate the obsession with multiples of twelve. Ditch the piano keyboard, get an isomorphic/generalized keyboard, and play in tunings with more recognizable musicality. Explore extended meantone (syntonic) tunings, or even magic, hanson, or bohlen-pierce before tuning your piano to sixtheenth tone, you know?

[stratfordct]

This would be awesome horror movie music!! Can't you just hear this in the background while Jack Nicholson says "HEEERE'S JOHNNY!"

[RSwordIAAA]

sounds great..nice and organic... generalized keyboards may work well for large # equal temperaments. It was hoping he was playing a 16-tone octave :)... 16-tone would be a practical way to get the benefits of 1/4 and 1/8th tones while preserving the minor thirds and improving the major thirds and the inversion. the minor seventh in 16 is also more "in tune" than 12-tone...

[odolany]

encore!

[STorpedo]

@trombone71592 Sure it can. A lot of things can be considered compositions. Now whether it's a good one or not is another question. And that question we're not yet qualified to answer (at least judging from your reaction); we can only make a value judgement, or evaluate the piece, only as soon as we understand what it is. I know I don't yet.

[FlamingIceCubez]

I think smacking your head on the piano would sound better.

[Hansdampf86]

@FlamingIceCubez

....or smacking your guitar on the piano would sound better...

[KBMKBMKBMKBM]

yo is awesome

[qwAirGear]

I'm not quite a fan of the sixteenth-tone pianos. Their only having one octave means that their applications are somewhat restricted, with the sort of thing in this video as the biggest application. Maybe that means we should leave such small intervals to other instruments or use the "multiple pianos" setup that has been used for some microtonal compositions...

[theillfrisch]

i found that interesting.

[ccoraxfan]

I think that for most people, this has got to rank right up there with fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. That was over 2 minutes of ear torture, nothing more.

[spocksmusic]

I thought this was very cool. Who tuned the piano and how? It reminds me of deep waterphone dissonances and huge metal scraping things being submersed in water. Cage would be proud.

[IncubusIsStellar8]

ow ow ow ow ow my earsss!!

[xXJoviixX]

omg...i cant hear it to the end....

[Hansdampf86]

...its hard stuff.

[nekros729]

oh my gosh it hurts...

[oddrulerofmars]

Why won't it resolve? hahaha

[iluvvsmp2]

so does this mean she can play 16ths of a tone, or its 16 tones to the octave?

either way, this doesn't sound too swell

[Hansdampf86]

she plays 16ths of a tone - from the lowest to the highest key is one octave.

[emptyflagpole]

@emptyflagpole Wait, I miscounted the whole steps in a whole tone scale; you can't count the root as an interval, only the octave, so it's 6. 6*16=96, still more than 88. So 88/96 reduces to 11/12, so the highest piano key is exactly a 12-tone equal-tempered major 7th above the bottom one, since maj7 is the 11th tone in a 12-TEToctave division. Stil not a full octave, but a closer approximation than I'd allowed at first.

[spocksmusic]

1/16th of a tone (more or less)

[hootinouts]

Say, is that a captive audience or are they a group of hostages?

[Hansdampf86]

it's a group of music students, hostages is a good word for it....

[marduk3110]

Look for Julián Carrillo first composer of this kind. He did so many awsome things during Twentieth Century.

[emanuetre]

disturbing

[jansonmorr]

it hurst.

[mariachisperuanos]

Mejor que desafinen una guitarra y toquen lo que sea.

Una ves mas digo, "CUALQUIERA PUEDE MICROTONEAR EMPIRICAMENTE", PERO NO CUALQUIERA REALISA UN MICROTONALISMO ORGANISADO.

No pasa nada con este video

[ordisi78]

Amén.

[vitor881205]

tienes toda la razon...

[PabloRGA]

qué te la das?? realiza va con "s" animal jajaj

[golafs]

what do you mean by 16tone?

is it tuned in 16 tone equal temperament? (16tET)

[Hansdampf86]

hmm, what a good question...

so, for example from C to D normaly there is a half step.

on this piano you have 16 steps in between.

from the lowest to the highest key its one octave.

the piano was specially built for this tuning.

[golafs]

wow, haha. that´s cool!

yes it didn´t look like a 16tET when she was playing, was expecting larger intervals when she moved the hands :)

I have never heard a piano tuned this way. excellent.

[Mozeroscar]

sounds pretty disonant... like bartok on 16th :/

to the composer... check out the theory for this sounds, i saw chords like in the conventional way that's why you found that dissonant sound....

[RodrigusVI]

Yeah I agree this isnt the best composition for a 16th note system... some works of Julian Carrillo are quite great using this system and others

[kratanuva725]

(yes I read the info) I don't know if this sounds bad because of the video quality, but this is the absolute WORST microtonal peice I have ever heard.

16th tone sounds horrible, stick with quarter tone.

[Hansdampf86]

ok, whatever you mean...i like it.

[Benwade90]

i agree, 16th just becomes too dissonant and oscillatory.. it's interesting, but ultimately, so is quarter tone, and it's a lot more enjoyable to listen to.

[traceur13]

Is this abstract music or something?

[buxheimerorgelbuch]

i love the oscillations between the single notes... sounds good!! but a longer vid would have been great.

[mortson978]

I dont think quality is the problem, the music is just shitty.

[AlexandrewPerson]

Better quality next time... the quality was awful... sorry

[Hansdampf86]

exactly what i write in the infos... bad qualitiy, sorry.

[nomadicjazz23]

お気に入り!!!!