It’s eclectic, and electric.
We were already fans of St. Petersburg composer Elizabeth A. Baker thanks to her work with the International Toy Piano Festival, but the 28-year-old new and experimental music advocate just totally won us over with a unique recording technique that involves vibrators.
The inaugural Florida International Toy Piano Festival blurs the line between work and whimsy
The sex toy has been used in piano composition before, according to Baker, but it’s usually a more passive approach where the vibrator is just left in the piano.
“I felt that the method was underused and should be further explored,” Baker told CL, adding that she creates sonic hypotheses in her head before carrying out experiments. She also knew the piece had to be silicone. “Any other material would have percussive qualities that at this juncture were not of interest to me. Following the scientific method, my next step after mulling over a hypothesis and conducting thought experiments is to test the idea in real life.”
Vibrators are obviously exciting pieces of technology, but Baker says the vibrator excites the secondary harmonics in a piano, too.
“If you have the dampers up, amplifies sympathetic resonance from other strings that represent the partials of the primary fundamental tone and ‘secondary fundamental. Apart from the fact that this sympathetic response sounds wonderfully fulfilling, of particular interest to me is how it conceptually plays with the idea of command voices,” she added.
To be clear, the sex toy did not work on Toy Piano (scaled down to miniature from its upright and grand cousins), but Baker did also try it on viola and drums.
Baker says she is working on several pieces of new music that will utilize the technique, and followers can probably expect to hear it in an upcoming performance with the St. Pete Opera.
Watch it in action — and read our full Q&A — below.
Where'd you get it? Why?
I purchased a silicone vibrator on Amazon for musical purposes. There are two other instances that I know of where vibrators have been used as preparations for prepared piano; however, those instances really just leave the vibrators in the piano and there is less active interaction with the instrument. Initially after discovering what had been done with this extended technique, I felt that the method was underused and should be further explored. Because I approach a lot of my sonic creations from a conceptual viewpoint, I am always experimenting with sound in my head and creating hypotheses about what various things might do. Before I even purchased the vibrator, I had ideas about how it might effect certain instruments and I knew that it needed to be silicone because any other material would have percussive qualities that at this juncture were not of interest to me. Following the scientific method, my next step after mulling over a hypothesis and conducting thought experiments is to test the idea in real life.
When the vibrator was delivered, I began to experiment with it on instruments that weren't a piano including viola and drums. It was wildly unsuccessful on toy piano and other instruments with considerable density like metal glockenspiel bars. (Though I'm certain that a vibrator of another material would have a different effect, I will have to test that theory later.)
What did you learn about the way it makes music?
What I absolutely love about this technique on drums is that by exciting the drums natural resonant frequencies you can really make the drums "ring" and because the vibrator is relatively continuous (until it runs out of power) you can sustain these tones with a drone-like quality indefinitely. Pieces made with drums using this technique have a meditative nature that just makes one want to crawl inside the instrument and explore the world in which it exists at a microscopic level because of the organic complexity of the resonant tones.
In piano, a vibrator really excites secondary harmonics; which, if you have the dampers up, amplifies sympathetic resonance from other strings that represent the partials of the primary fundamental tone and "secondary fundamental." (Secondary fundamental because the secondary harmonic is loud enough to excite the partials that exist when it is the fundamental tone.) Apart from the fact that this sympathetic response sounds wonderfully fulfilling, of particular interest to me is how it conceptually plays with the idea of command voices.
Command voices?
In patients with psychosis, command voices are the ones that instruct them to do destructive things or behave in a certain manner. I am intensely fascinated with the relationship between a musician and their instrument as a secondary self, and the implied consciousness of an inanimate object. In many ways, musicians are command voices for instruments, composers are command voices for musicians, fundamental tones are command voices for the partials that make up the pitches that we know; but all of these instances are largely predictable and controlled.
A vibrator presents a more accurate depiction of a command voice in a psychotic patient, while I may be able to control one or two of them in manipulating the sound of the piano, as I add more of them, I lose control… specific pitches and the resulting resonant tones are left to chance. In this way, the instrument is coming alive in a manner that removes my authoritative energy, and my conversation with the instrument inevitably must fundamentally change. Furthermore, vibrators in piano create a certain underlying chaos; as I begin to interact with the instrument in a traditional manner (playing the keys) I am acting as a dominant command voice, but on a deeper level because of the subtlety of the resonant voices underneath, I am also, presenting the public face of my instrument. We all have noise in our heads, it may manifest as non-command voices, but an inner dialogue is always present; however, we don't go around sharing our inner thoughts all the time, we have a mask… in this relationship, I am the piano's mask, which conceptually obliterates the conventional relationship between musician and instrument.
Can we expect to see it in a performance soon?
I am working on several new pieces using this extended technique: recordings of my use on drums will be on the debut album "…and darkness was upon the face of the deep." by the Baker-Bargainer Duo (baker-bargainer.com); a meditative piece for viola; a dance and music collaboration with choreographer Helen Hansen French called "If/Then" which will premiere at Omaha Under the Radar in Omaha, Nebraska on July 6 uses the piano. A public performance of If/Then will occur at St. Pete Opera after we return from Omaha. Beyond duo works are solo iterations including a work called "Command Voices" for toy piano, synthesizers, and drums; alongside a set of new pieces for piano, all of which will be a part of performances, new recordings, upcoming tours, and other public engagements that will be announced on my website (elizabethabaker.com) as we move into fall.
This article appears in Jun 15-22, 2017.