drukqs prepared piano

  awkward said:

i was listening to drukqs this morning and the piano tracks are imo some of richards best work. it got me thinking about how he created these tracks. i know hes quite secretive but what do we know about how he prepared the piano?

 

how embarrassing..

first of all, yes its a prepared piano with random items put on the strings, percussive sounds are made with pieces of metal, forks and stuff like that

 

his piano tracks are sequenced (obvious because of their quantizing and impossible to reach octaves unless you have 3 arms), but where the fuck did you get the idea that richard can't play the piano. first of all, he's been making music since the mid 80's, that thing alone should warrant that he should be a quite able piano player at the time. just not a conventional one

 

second, he played his parents piano and fucked with it when he was young, that must constitute some piano playing i'm pretty sure.

 

he's a fucking musician, he has lots of synths and i bet he has lots of midi keyboards that he plays his stuff with.. i dont think every single piece of music in his discography is programmed with a fucking mouse

 

he picked up to play violin just so he could record notes and play them with a sampler.. and violin is slightly harder to learn than piano so to speak

 

kaini sorry about your dog man. peace

  dr. drumatix said:

he picked up to play violin just so he could record notes and play them with a sampler.. and violin is slightly harder to learn than piano so to speak

 

Playing a violin is difficult. I used to play and it was frustrating compared to piano or guitar. Playing one note on a violin to sample it, however, is fucking easy as hell. You need no training at all.

  dr. drumatix said:

he should be a quite able piano player at the time. just not a conventional one

 

second, he played his parents piano and fucked with it when he was young, that must constitute some piano playing i'm pretty sure.

 

he's a fucking musician, he has lots of synths and i bet he has lots of midi keyboards that he plays his stuff with.. i dont think every single piece of music in his discography is programmed with a fucking mouse

 

he picked up to play violin just so he could record notes and play them with a sampler.. and violin is slightly harder to learn than piano so to speak

 

Umm have you heard the melodies on his earlier bits? they're very simple one line deals...i don't think he rates much as a performer. As a composer, totally diffferent story...

how do you know he played his parent's piano when he was younger? read that in a magazine article?

and having played both to a fairly decent level, I can assure you that the piano is harder to learn than the violin.

  dr. drumatix said:

he picked up to play violin just so he could record notes and play them with a sampler.. and violin is slightly harder to learn than piano so to speak

 

 

Yeah man he's so good at it on "Outside Kick Ass Violin Solo"

so we dont have specific info on each track. because surely how the piano was prepared is important. didnt we know with cages work?

  chenGOD said:

  dr. drumatix said:

he should be a quite able piano player at the time. just not a conventional one

 

second, he played his parents piano and fucked with it when he was young, that must constitute some piano playing i'm pretty sure.

 

he's a fucking musician, he has lots of synths and i bet he has lots of midi keyboards that he plays his stuff with.. i dont think every single piece of music in his discography is programmed with a fucking mouse

 

he picked up to play violin just so he could record notes and play them with a sampler.. and violin is slightly harder to learn than piano so to speak

 

Umm have you heard the melodies on his earlier bits? they're very simple one line deals...i don't think he rates much as a performer. As a composer, totally diffferent story...

how do you know he played his parent's piano when he was younger? read that in a magazine article?

and having played both to a fairly decent level, I can assure you that the piano is harder to learn than the violin.

 

my melodies in my electronic music are simple one line deals because i'm a lazy fucker.. when i play live for myself or together with others that's a whole other story

 

i play the piano myself, havent ever touched a violin and it appears to be harder, mainly from what i've heard from those who play it. i'm learning the guitar now and i'm finding it pretty easy.. except for getting those finger in barre chord positions

 

I can agree that the piano is hard, but i dunno really, its har to compare it with anything.. i think something that you learn everything, music theory and intervals etc the first on, becomes much harder.

 

again he's non conventinal, and doesn't speak at all about this, i'm just interpreting clues he's left in interviews and articles. he seems to be able to program 303 lines pretty well and that thing seems to be quite hard to play :grin:

 

i dunno really, it just seems illogical for me that a musician of aphex's calibre wouldn't have any sort of proficiency on an instrument like the piano, he's been doing his thing for almost 30 years. i learnt most of my music theory in less than a month and my piano playing has been due to progressive learning myself and simply becoming better at playing the notes that i record for most music. ive practiced some with a real piano and jam alot..

 

he's said in interviews that he records with midi keyboards and that fact alone makes me believe he's a good player, considering he's capable of melodies that fit together alot, some evidence of counterpoint (probably just because he thinks it sounds good, but still)

 

he may not be as good as Horowitz but I'm positive he has some degree of ability to press those white and black keys and make it not sound like a cat is screaming

 

  Quote

Playing a violin is difficult. I used to play and it was frustrating compared to piano or guitar. Playing one note on a violin to sample it, however, is fucking easy as hell. You need no training at all.

he said in an interview that he learned to play it so i'm assuming he did not just mean the ability to play chromatic notes. I think he sampled it just to use it in conjunction with his computer music. it's easier than picking the violin up and charge up mics and shit everytime you want to make a track. plus that you can play chords even if you only have one violin

 

i can't be arsed to find the interview because i'm lazy and there's so few interviews with him out so it shouldnt be hard to find

 

  Quote

Yeah man he's so good at it on "Outside Kick Ass Violin Solo"

 

I think that's like the first "aphex" track I ever heard.. i found it randomly on DC++ and it got me interested in his music. ironic considering it's a fake.

Edited October 11, 2006 by dr. drumatix

  dr. drumatix said:

he said in an interview that he learned to play it so i'm assuming he did not just mean the ability to play chromatic notes. I think he sampled it just to use it in conjunction with his computer music. it's easier than picking the violin up and charge up mics and shit everytime you want to make a track. plus that you can play chords even if you only have one violin

 

Well if you say so it must be true.

i dont know jack shit. he might as well never have touched a real piano without a sequencer and uses the mouse for every single melody he makes, disregarding the fact that it takes ages compared to just playing the melody with the keyboard with some degree of proficiency

 

im just guessing. learning to play an instrument is hard, but it's not that hard. it's infinitely harder to compose a full piece of good electronic music, and is the reason drukqs doesn't sound the same as surfing on sinewaves

You are aware that avril was studied by piano masters and they said its impossible to play by hand. I also think learning to read music and play the piano at the same time is one of the hardest things to master in the world. Waaaaay hard than writing electronic music.

screws

and pieces of rubber

  marf said:

You are aware that avril was studied by piano masters and they said its impossible to play by hand. I also think learning to read music and play the piano at the same time is one of the hardest things to master in the world. Waaaaay hard than writing electronic music.

 

I mentioned it earlier yeah, that you need three arms to play the higher octaves in avril 14th. Like I also said earlier, the piano tracks on drukqs are obviously sequenced, but I'm sure he might have come up with those melodies just jamming around, or having a melody in his head and trying to put that down in notes (he's said in interviews alot of his melodies come from his head), saying to himself, "hey, this works".

 

Learning to read music is difficult, requires a shitload of practicing, learning to play the piano is hard I suppose but I dont find it that hard because it happens progressively. I haven't done much to improve my playing except practicing drilling and stuff, and just playing alot. I have so much fun playing I dont percieve it as a difficult process.

 

I still think it's harder to write electronic music, because with electronic music you're not just learning one thing, you're learning ten different things and you need to learn how to combine that into a great product. You need to learn a large part of music theory, what works well together, you need to learn EQ, compression, heck every aspect of mastering, that alone takes a lifetime to train the ears. You need to learn to program synths, and on the top of that you need to learn practically everything there is to learn about compression.

 

it takes a life time to make good music of any kind, electronic music is no exception.

 

Playing the piano is essentially training your fingers and hand coordination to work together with your brain, learning the notes and their relations. it's an arduous task, yes, and I'm nowhere near the masters of piano playing and probably never will be, but I'm at a position where I'm satisfied with my ability to play. Considering how short it took for me to get where I am and the many years richard has spent making music and all over experimenting with all there is to experiment with, I find it rather illogical that he wouldn't have ventured into piano/keyboard playing.

 

anyway, my 2 cents.

  marf said:

You are aware that avril was studied by piano masters and they said its impossible to play by hand. I also think learning to read music and play the piano at the same time is one of the hardest things to master in the world. Waaaaay hard than writing electronic music.

 

well it's not impossible

 

but it's obvious he didn't play it

in conclusion, he prepared for the piano by smoking a lot

actually guys it was me

that reminds me, I need to sample my violin.

OK guys, so I remember arguing that not all of the piano tracks are "prepared". Am I right, like avril 14th. Isn't that just regular? Unless he put a pillow in there or something small. like sprayed it with juice.

there are some crazy multi-octave chords in avril that you'd need implausibly long fingers or a bunch of 14" sweatpants boners to play properly, iirc

Yeah but that has nothing to do with it being "prepared", just means its computer controlleed. Two completly different things.

I always wondered about the production of the piano tracks... I listened to them quite a while back at excessive volumes and the background noise is odd, not hiss or annoying background noise but pedals and things probably put there on purpose... I'm not really sure.

the straight up piano tracks, unprepared ones that is, sound like they are totally performed by someone who is NOT richard d james. The only reason i say this is because they sound professionally played with no mistakes, and unless richard learned piano quite hardcore for this album i highly doubt they are him.

 

the prepared piano tracks were done on a yamaha dysklaviar, kind of like a modernized player piano but midi controlled. Now its possible that the normal piano tracks were using this device also and recorded using different microphones to give them a raw "in the room" feel. Either way its absolutely ridiculous to me he would spend that much money on that yamaha piano and output such standard sounding human performences out of them. I mean whats the point of having a player piano unless your going to go Collin nancarrow style. And the "preparing" involved in those piano tracks was minimal at best, quite a few early john cage prepared piano pieces sound much more dynamic and variable. I personally was never a fan of what i call the "Filler" tracks of Drukqs. The guy has a wife and kid now so he might have just bought the piano to amuse his child and secondary motivation was possibly using it on an album.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Ghostbusters III

Not in 2001 he didn't!

To me the piano pieces seem well thought out melodically and tonally, certainly they are more than merely using it in passing on a whim and sticking the results on for the sake of it... I think they work really nicely in comparison to the drill tracks.

I never thought they sounded very human. I assumed he spit out as many regular piano recordings as he could, maybe with previous midi pieces he had. so that then after he fucked with the strings. I think some of the piece were played at very low velocities so there is a lot of tape hiss and machine noises, then it was normalized. Also far away mics. Like in father, the mic sounds very far off. A very nice short dark piece leading up to taking control. I always liked that.

  Ghostbusters III said:

the straight up piano tracks, unprepared ones that is, sound like they are totally performed by someone who is NOT richard d james. The only reason i say this is because they sound professionally played with no mistakes, and unless richard learned piano quite hardcore for this album i highly doubt they are him.

 

Strange, I mean I can't see Richard going to the effort to get anyone to do them or ripping anyone else off.

 

I always assumed it was multi-tracking messery, with certain phrases recorded individually... there are certain tell-tale signs in Avril 14th for example. I mean, for a start it's impossible (without duet) to play Avril 14th as it is on the recording, I had to simplify bits or face having to get a 3rd hand from some dead guy. Also listen to bits that sound pasted like when the first phrase repeats near the end... when the ending sequence starts there is no natural break to leap down/up on the piano. That's what it sounded like to me anyway. Check out the production on the track, I mentioned earlier that they were weird with the background noise but this is mainly multi-layered background noise? Sounds like pedals to me... or something moving in the background.

 

Anyway yeah, I don't think it wasn't RDJ personally.

I just checked this out and it sounds completly normal. No multitrack noise junk. Thats just the pianos gears moving. This was not played by hand, he used the disklavier.