Synth Jam With Moog PianoBar

Sunday Synth Jam: Palle Dahlstedt improvises on Steinway piano, Moog PianoBar and electronics.

The Moog PianoBar, a collaboration between Moog Music and Buchla And Associates, is a three-piece accessory that attaches to your piano and lets you trigger electronic sounds via MIDI. The user can select sounds from the Moog PianoBarโ€™s library of sounds or use its MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) capability to trigger any MIDI sound generator.

The Moog PianoBar is made up of the Scanner Bar, the Pedal Sensor and the Control Module. The Scanner Bar – a slim device that sits over the keys immediately in front of the piano fallboard – uses infrared sensors to register the keysโ€™ motions without touching or affecting their feel. It can be set in place in a few minutes, without tools and without affecting the piano itself.

The Pedal Sensor is placed on the floor under the pianoโ€™s pedals, and registers their motions.

The Control Module – a small box placed at a convenient spot on the piano – ties the Scanner Bar and Pedal Sensor to a MIDI output/input, and includes a library of internal sounds.

via dannefors1966:

Palle Dahlstedt improviserar pรฅ Artisten 13 april 2011.

14 thoughts on “Synth Jam With Moog PianoBar

  1. I appreciate this technical approach for what it is and the difficulty of composing, learning and playing such a piece, but it's just a tad to cerebral for me. I like some of the older "modern" stuff better.

  2. .-) Thanks for the feedback, guys! It's an improvisation, not a composition, even though programming such an instrument is a little bit like composing – you decide a space of possibilities, which shapes the musical outcome. The idea is to be able to control the electronic sound directly, just like I control an acoustic instrument, without being bound to preprogrammed beats/sounds/structures. I can change direction in a millisecond, to adjust to the other players (this concert featured two more musicians on related instruments). We now have versions for percussion, pressure sensors, klavier and even for the Guitar Hero controller (turning it into a concert instruments, with a number of commisioned pieces, and workshops with kids all around Sweden).

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