Bourke, Feed Me!
By kevanatkins on March 26, 2016 5:24 pm
This one features my Helpinstill upright, which is a rather unusual instrument in that it a real upright piano, with strings, hammers and all built into an ATA flight case. It also happens to have magnetic pickups and conveniently has both an instrument output and a built-in DI. So I shoved a guitar amp into it and played with the feedback on the strings through the magnetic pickup on the instrument output and brought out different resonances using the wah pedal and the dampers. Then through the DI output I recorded it and treated it with a bank of effects. Though, quite a lot of the sound is the dry signal as came in barring a bit of reverb. It's quite a colourful instrument.
I pulled this ol' thing out because I've been considering moving it on since I don't play it, but now I'm not so sure. I can see uses for these pickups. Hmm.
For funsies, I filmed the whole thing. I had a lot of fun with this. It was quite a physical performance. I didn't include any audio from the room or the amp because I was so rough with the pedal and instrument there was a lot of clunking, switching and at one point manhandling the amp to change the resonances. I was actually sore from it and I cut my finger on the wah pedal (just spotted it at 9'50", ha!). Worth it, though.
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)