Amit Pitaru
Hammond Flower
We've all seen loads of sampler-based, interactive Flash works online. You know: make your own music a la paint-by-numbers. At first, Amit's Hammond Flower seems to share something with this genre. But on closer inspection (and reading what he has to say about it on pitaru.com) we discover a much deeper study at work.
He has taken the beloved Hammond B3 organ and reverse engineered it to reveal, in a tactile, hands-on way, how it works and what gives it its particular charm. His own background as a musician basically led him to create a shifting, 8-tone composition that we deconstruct when we intereact with the flower. We discover the built-in dissonance of each tone and how each affects the others.
Saul Bellows (and others) has argued that arcane knowledge - that intense study and understanding of some tiny corner of the universe - actually puts the practitioneer in closer touch with all things. That's what Amit is doing: taking us much deeper into a specific musical device to reveal general information about (tonal) relationships.
Michael told me an interesting story about the thumb piano and its role in the creation of the world, but I forget the details now...
We've all seen loads of sampler-based, interactive Flash works online. You know: make your own music a la paint-by-numbers. At first, Amit's Hammond Flower seems to share something with this genre. But on closer inspection (and reading what he has to say about it on pitaru.com) we discover a much deeper study at work.
He has taken the beloved Hammond B3 organ and reverse engineered it to reveal, in a tactile, hands-on way, how it works and what gives it its particular charm. His own background as a musician basically led him to create a shifting, 8-tone composition that we deconstruct when we intereact with the flower. We discover the built-in dissonance of each tone and how each affects the others.
Saul Bellows (and others) has argued that arcane knowledge - that intense study and understanding of some tiny corner of the universe - actually puts the practitioneer in closer touch with all things. That's what Amit is doing: taking us much deeper into a specific musical device to reveal general information about (tonal) relationships.
Michael told me an interesting story about the thumb piano and its role in the creation of the world, but I forget the details now...
Geoffrey Shea
posted by geoffrey
1 Comments:
Well, once when walking through a park in west London i happened upon a cultural festival and on stage was an African storyteller who told the following traditional creation myth (that was a few years ago so this merely the basics and unfortunately i am unable to remember any of the actual names for the gods etc.)...
One day God was bored as he was all alone in the void, so he projected Imagination so that he would have someone to talk to. Since she could see God was bored and had nothing to do, Imagination suggested he create a mbira (a five tone "thumb piano"). Having nothing else to do God whipped one up.
Imagination enouraged him to try it and so God struck the first key with his thumb. As the note resounded throughout infinity rocks, minerals and planets were formed. When he struck the second note, the vibrations manifested as plants. With the third tone came all the animals and with the fourth birds. But when he struck the fifth note he was shocked to hear that it was not a full note, but merely a half note and from this flat note humans were born. And so it is that the human species is always a bit out of harmony with the universe...
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