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Mark Brown talks to Geoff Smith, whose reinvention of the piano allows players to alter the tuning of notes either before or during a performance
‘Fluid’ instrument allows pianists to alter sound before or while they play
For a non-pianist, the idea of a microtonally fluid piano might seem either no big deal or baffling. But this weekend a composer will reveal the result of a 10-year mission – nothing less than the reinvention of one of the most important instruments in western music.
Geoff Smith believes he has come up with the first multicultural acoustic piano – what he has trademarked as a fluid piano – which allows players to alter the tuning of notes either before or during a performance. Instead of a pianist having a fixed sound, 88 notes from 88 keys, Smith’s piano has sliders allowing them access to the different scales that you get in, for example, Indian and Iranian music. For good measure, Smith has included a horizontal harp.
The Guardian was last weekend given the first access to an instrument that is already generating considerable excitement – and it can be seen and heard on our website. It will be formally unveiled at the University of Surrey on Saturday and receive a London premiere at the Purcell Room in March.
Smith, a Brighton-based composer and performer, said: “The fluid piano is a western piano as we know it, similar to an early fortepiano, but because of the tuning mechanisms, suddenly, musicians can explore scales from the Middle East, from Iran.”
Smith’s instrument has been made by the Somerset-based Christopher Barlow and a light ash has been deliberately chosen as the wood – Smith said he did not want it to look like a dark coffin.
The fluid piano has generated much interest since it was first mentioned in the Guardian six years ago – when it was Smith with little more than a one-key mechanism and an ambition. Now he has the actual instrument he has been getting performers on board.
“I’ve said to musicians they might feel insecure about this piano, they might feel scared. But if they embrace it they will have this big feeling of liberation, a big high.”
At the premiere, three pianists will perform, including Pam Chowhan, the head of planning at the Royal Festival Hall. She admitted to being daunted when first confronted with the piano.
“It was really scary, it is even now. I’m mainly a classical pianist and you kind of know what you’re doing, you know how the piano is going to respond and you spend ages and ages on tone control andknowinghow it is going to sound. Suddenly I’ve got a piano which sounds like nothing I’ve heard before. It opens up so many choices that you become almost paralysed.”
There have been all sorts of challenges, including having to come up with her own way of writing music for the instrument.
Chowhan said the internet had helped open access to all sorts of music from around the world. “If you’re going to start delving into different cultures and bring those influences into your work you need to think about tuning and the traditional piano simply can’t cut it. The piano, for me, is absolutely useless in a non-western context because it can’t respond to the subtle and fluid tuning of other cultures.”
Also performing on Saturday will be London-based jazz pianist Nikki Yeoh and the Leeds-based improvisational pianist Matthew Bourne. He said playing the fluid piano was “like walking into a huge sweet shop. The possibilities are endless. Sometimes I do nothing, I just sit and stare at it”.
Smith said he had received much support – from Arts Council England for example– but had also encountered resistance. “Instruments of the western orchestra are locked in time, ringfenced. Why is that? It’s not for technical reasons, so it must be for political or cultural reasons. There’s a lot of talk in classical music about making orchestras more diverse. The only way you’re going to bring new people in is by changing the instruments. To some people that is a completely alien concept.
“We are one of the most multicultural societies in Europe. Some people need to put their money where their mouth is.”
Smith, who has written scores for silent films and is a highly regarded player of the hammered dulcimer, has been invited to take his piano to a Chopin festival in Poland. But the dream is to get his fluid piano manufactured. “It has become a fundamental part of my life, because it’s driven by a vision. It’s not just about money, although I haven’t got much money so of course I’d like to make some. Any money I have had has gone on this,” he said. “The thing was, I always knew it would work – I wasn’t like some crazy inventor.”
The outrageous pop singer has been booked for the Royal Variety Performance
Age: 23.
Appearance: Topshop sales assistant trying to convince a credulous police officer she’s an extraterrestrial being.
It’s a great look, and one adopted behind closed doors by a surprising variety of people – so why should I care about her? Because she’s been awarded the highest honour available to a pop singer.
The Victoria Cross? No, you dolt, a slot at the Royal Variety Performance.
Her Maj is a big fan, then? There has been no public statement from Buckingham Palace, though we suggest Prince Philip neck some beta-blockers before the show. Goodness only knows what she will do for his blood pressure.
Foreign is she? Italian-American, but it’s her racy stage act we’re worried about. The Daily Telegraph reported that at the MTV video awards she pretended to stab herself to death. Fake blood sprayed everywhere, and she ended up hanging from the ceiling. She’s outrageous, you know.
I can’t see how that would worry Prince Philip. Sounds suspiciously like the aftermath of a trip to the grouse moor, with her as the grouse. All right then, if you still don’t believe she’s a threat to the very fabric of society, you should read the Daily Mail. It reported that she’s become a bad influence on Beyoncé.
How? By convincing her to record fewer great pop songs and more tedious ballads? No, by getting her to wear an eye mask and a Perspex bra in a video. Lady Gaga likes her peculiar costumes.
Oh, for goodness sake. Is that the best you can do? Listen, google Lady+Gaga+Outrage and you get 190,000 hits. Google Prince+Philip+Outrage and you only get 40,900 hits. Given the number of outrages he’s been involved in, I’d say that’s pretty clear evidence of her outrageousness.
Do say: “I used to buy my lingerie from La Perla, but I find Perspex so much more comfortable.”
Don’t say: “I’m sure Prince Harry will lend you one of his costumes for the show.”
The O2 Arena, formerly the much-maligned Millennium Dome, is now officially the world’s most popular music venue, having sold almost four times as many tickets as New York’s Madison Square Garden in the last month.
The milestone comes soon after the venue branched out into sport. This week, more than 270,000 people will watch the world’s top eight tennis players at the ATP World Tour Finals at the venue in Greenwich, south-east London. Two days after Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray leave the building, Eddie Izzard will take to the stage.
“We are the world’s most popular music venue and attract the world’s biggest stars. That tends to grab the headlines, but quietly we have been working away at making sure we get a healthy sports calendar,” said Alex Hill, senior executive director of O2’s owner, AEG Europe.
Next year is likely to bring boxer David Haye’s first defence of his recent WBA world heavyweight title, and darts will also come to the O2 for the first time in February. The O2 has also been mentioned as a potential venue for the new World Series of Boxing, mooted as a Champions League-style event that can bridge the gap between amateur and professional boxing.
At the London Olympics in 2012, hundreds of thousands of ticket holders will watch sports ranging from volleyball to swimming.
The original exhibition opened on 1 January 2000 and ran for a year.
The O2 Arena, formerly the much maligned Millennium Dome, is officially the world’s most popular music venue, having sold almost four times as many tickets as New York’s Madison Square Garden in the past month.
The record comes soon after it branched out into sport. This week, more than 270,000 people will watch the world’s top eight tennis players at the ATP World Tour Finals at the venue in Greenwich, south-east London. Two days after Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray leave the building, Eddie Izzard will take to the stage.
“We are the world’s most popular music venue and attract the world’s biggest stars. That tends to grab the headlines, but quietly we have been working away at making sure we get a healthy sports calendar,” said Alex Hill, senior executive director of O2’s owner, AEG Europe. Next year is likely to bring boxer David Haye’s first defence of his recent world heavyweight title.
US chart-topper Lady Gaga is to sing for the Queen at this year’s Royal Variety performance. The Poker Face singer is the latest act confirmed for the show, producers saidtoday. Lady Gaga, 23, is known for her dramatic stage performances, including shooting pyrotechnics from her bra and pretending to stab herself to death in a pool of fake blood. She joins singers Bette Midler, Michael Buble, Miley Cyrus and comedian Whoopi Goldberg on the bill. Dance troupe and Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity will also perform in front of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the event hosted by Peter Kay.
Is the independent festival on its way out? Seeing the Big Chill fall into the hands of a corporate giant feels like a symbolic moment, but it doesn’t reflect the health of the UK festival scene.
The Big Chill failed not because independent festivals can’t survive, but because Chillfest moved its festival away from the event’s original ethos – an event for people who used to go clubbing – into the mainstream. Last year Leonard Cohen headlined, and he doesn’t come cheap. Put simply, once an independent festival is booking a headliner one might expect to see at Glastonbury, then financial ruin is likely to be the next act onstage.
While there’s little doubt the festival circuit has become grotesquely overcrowded, the high-profile events run by the likes of Festival Republic tend to obscure the immense variety of festivals available between May and September. The best are the events where the promoters have put effort into creating a memorable weekend precisely because they can’t afford the big-name bands that cram the stages at the “corporate” festivals.
At Indietracks, in Derbyshire, fans could go for rides on a steam train; at the Outsider, they can go mountain biking in the Cairngorms; at Lounge on the Farm in Kent, the draw was not just Edwyn Collins, but the fact all food on site was sourced from within a 20-mile radius. More festivals will surely overreach themselves and either close, or be taken over by giant promoters. But for those who enjoy festivals at which you can watch the headliner from closer than three-quarters of a mile away, the opportunities are more than ever before.
Michael Hann is editor of the Guardian’s Film & Music
The NME has announced its choice of best albums of the noughties, with Is this it at the top. Find out how the decade’s best compare in the charts – and read the original Guardian reviews
So, the NME’s writers and artists’ choice catalogue of the noughties has the Strokes at the top of a list of the best albums of the decade, beating British indie stars the Libertines into second place earlier this week. Pete Doherty and Carl Barat’s former band’s debut album Up the Bracket is high up in the list, but it is the Strokes’ first release Is This It that takes top spot.
The reaction has been mixed but the list is a picture of a decade that seems to be moving further away the closer we get to the end of it.
While there are a number of Rn’B and hip hop acts in the list such as Outkast, the top 10 is dominated by guitar bands and acts such as Primal Scream, Radiohead and the Arctic Monkeys.
We’ve taken the top 50 and put it on a spreadsheet for you – complete with chart positions courtsey of the Official Chart Company and links to Guardian reviews of the albums when they came out. Let us know if you can do anything with them.
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• The Strokes take top spot in NME list with Is This It
• Libertines debut Up the Bracket is highest British entry
• Datablog: get the list as a spreadsheet
New York rockers the Strokes have topped a list of the best albums of the decade, beating British indie stars – and tabloid darlings – the Libertines into second place.
Pete Doherty and Carl Barat’s former band are hailed for their debut album Up the Bracket but it is the Strokes’ first release Is This It that takes top spot in best 50 list compiled by NME.
Primal Scream’s xtrmntr takes third place in a top 10 dominated by guitar-led rock acts.
Bands such as Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys, plus record producers and label bosses, were among those who voted.
The Strokes’ lead singer Julian Casablancas said of his band’s success: “Does it mean it’s a good musical decade or a bad musical decade? I don’t know, I’m such a bad judge of my own stuff. But I thought it was great when I heard.
“Recording the album was fun. It was stressing, it was exciting. I don’t want to get carried away, but I’m pretty damn psyched with myself.”
Both the Strokes and the Libertines have been heavily championed by the magazine over the years.
Is This It, which featured a suggestive image of a naked model wearing a black vinyl glove, was one of the most acclaimed albums of the year when it was released in 2001. Many saw it as a return to the sound of late 1970s New York, evoking bands such as Television.
The Libertines’ first release came out in 2002, with their raw, punky tracks – produced by the Clash’s Mick Jones – winning an army of young fans. But drug-related fall-outs meant the band had all but fallen apart by the time their follow-up appeared in 2004.
Since then Doherty – who now styles himself Peter – went on to form Babyshambles and established a solo career, while fellow Libertines songwriter Carl Barat led Dirty Pretty Things, although both have talked about reviving the band.
The Libertines’ second, self-titled release also makes NME’s top 50.
The year 2002 is the most well-represented in the list with eight albums, including releases by Interpol, the Streets and Queens of the Stone Age.
NME editor Krissi Murison said: “This is the definitive word on the greatest albums of the noughties – as voted for by everyone who helped make music brilliant this decade.”
1. The Strokes – Is This It
2. The Libertines – Up the Bracket
3. Primal Scream – xtrmntr
4. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell
6. PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
7. Arcade Fire – Funeral
8. Interpol – Turn On the Bright Lights
9. The Streets – Original Pirate Material
10. Radiohead – In Rainbows
11. At The Drive In – Relationship of Command
12. LCD Soundsystem – The Sound of Silver
13. The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
14. Radiohead – Kid A
15. Queens Of The Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
16. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come for Free
17. Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise
18. The White Stripes – Elephant
19. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
20. Blur – Think Tank
21. The Coral – The Coral
22. Jay-Z – The Blueprint
23. Klaxons – Myths of the Near Future
24. The Libertines – The Libertines
25. Rapture – Echoes
26. Dizzee Rascal – Boy in Da Corner
27. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black
28. Johnny Cash – Man Comes Around
29. Super Furry Animals – Rings Around the World
30. Elbow – Asleep In the Back
31. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
32. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
33. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
34. Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump
35. Babyshambles – Down in Albion
36. Spirtualized – Let It Come Down
37. The Knife – Silent Shout
38. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
39. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
40. Ryan Adams – Gold
41. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
42. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
43. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
44. Outkast – Loveboxxx/The Love Below
45. Avalanches – Since I Left You
46. Delgados – The Great Eastern
47. Brendan Benson – Lapalco
48. Walkmen – Bows and Arrows
49. Muse – Absolution
50. MIA – Arular
Say no to asbos for downloaders | Charlotte Gore
HEADLINE FEED // [READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE]
The internet is such a huge part of life that Mandelson’s plans to cut people off for copyright breach is a clear restriction of liberty
At 33 years old I’m more Generation X than Generation X-Box. I’m too old to be one of the new wave of “digital natives” who’ve never known life without the internet, but I’m just about young enough (and geeky enough) to consider myself an enthusiastic immigrant. I moved in about 13 years ago, and if I could swear an oath of allegiance to some Head Of The Internet State, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Sadly there is no president of the internet, which is a shame because it means I’m stuck with my British passport instead. And relations between Britain and the internet have been strained of late.
Lord Mandelson is seeking to grant himself significant powers in the fight against copyright infringement – the ability to do just about anything so long as it’s in the interest of protecting copyright, and without having to go through parliament.
This is disturbing not just because it represents a triumph of executive power over the normal democratic process, but also because it also reflects the increasing hunger our politicians have to control the internet. For the politicians that’s a hopeless dream, but the damage they can do in the trying is real.
The beauty of the internet is the egalitarianism of it. It is empowering, enriching and liberating in the most literal sense: freedom of speech, freedom of association, access to knowledge and access to the most exciting and glorious marketplace in the world.
We organise our social lives with it, we do our banking and pay our bills through it. We access public services and news and we express ourselves creatively through it. Politics has been opened up and democratised through blogging, Twitter and access to information and debate.
Despite this, Mandelson wants to be able to ban individuals from it as punishment for copyright infringement. It’s an idea that has the media giants rubbing their hands together with glee. Yet what they want is impossible – at least, not possible yet. First, the vast majority of home wireless connections aren’t secure. Our internet connections can be easily hijacked and used by other people without our permission or knowledge, and the owner of the phone line will get the blame for what they do.
Second, people do not have their own personal connections to the internet – households share them. By banning the person who owns the phone line, they ban the entire family (and, of course, the neighbour who’s been downloading episodes of Lost through it).
All this together means Mandelson’s plan violates the fundamental principle that people are innocent until proven guilty, and that only the guilty should be punished. His system would see parents thrown off because of their children, children thrown off because of their parents and all thrown off because of a stranger.
So here’s the key question: do we want to live in a society where people can be cut off from the internet without a trial, without a jury and without proving they committed any offence at all?
How to answer that depends on how you view the internet. Is it like a hi-fi that the council can confiscate if you disturb your neighbours, or is it more like being banished from the town you live in?
I vote banished. I know enough people who don’t have friends in the real world, who socialise exclusively online. I know people who depend on access to the internet for their careers and livelihoods. It’s become such a huge part of our lives, of the way we live and interact with each other that cutting people off from it is a clear and severe restriction of their liberty.
This is the case we need to make – that the government should not be able to restrict people’s liberty on a whim. If copyright infringement is a crime, it needs to be treated like any other crime. What we’re getting instead – asbos for downloaders – is a powerful reminder that when it comes to civil liberties we can’t let our guard down against this government, no matter how close to the end it may be.
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November 20th, 2009
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