The Sound Of A Burning Piano

This video, The Burning Piano, captures a sound design session of sound designer and composer Diego Stocco, who wins the Synthtopia Shiva Award for Awesomely Destructive Creation

Stocco explains:

I sampled sounds and noises while the piano was burning.

Since I only had one take I recorded as much material as possible. Initially I was pointing the gas flame lighter directly at the strings and I was playing single notes, but eventually the fire started to burn the hammers and other parts of the piano and at that point the strings were exploding because of the temperature. Later during the day I moved the piano and recorded additional sounds with the rests of the burned strings. I also used a hammer to pull the heated strings.

I’m not a professional videomaker, my focus is on sounds and music. I’m actually creating new playable sounds out of objects and customized instruments with innovative recording techniques. I put together this video by using pictures and portions of videos I took while I was recording, then I composed the soundtrack entirely with the sounds created out of this session.

Here’s another one of his fascinating promo videos, Lumosonic:

Stocco explains:

One day I had a bunch of stuff over my desk, and I was looking for something, accidentally I hit a light bulb and the sound captured my attention. So I decided to try recording the tiny and weak sound of the internal filament. I bought some other light bulbs (different Watts and sizes) and sampled an entire range of playable sounds.

Stocco’s work on these promos is amazing; the sound design, the compositions and concepts all work together really well, and the results are inspirational. 

You can check out more of Stocco’s promos at his Vimeo site

Diego Stocco is a sound designer and composer who works as Director of Sound for Epic Score, a Los Angeles-based music production company. His sound design credits include work for Nokia, BMW, Samsung, Panasonic and General Motors. And – as if he wasn’t busy enough – Stocco is one of the creative geniuses behind Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere virtual instrument software, which he presented earlier this month at the AES show in San Francisco.

via Retrothing

One thought on “The Sound Of A Burning Piano

  1. I swear I have heard this sound in my mind years ago when I first started writing dark & moody songs LOL! Diego’s work is great and I wish I would have known that there was such occupation as a sound designer back in the mid 80’s when My Uncle and I were recording sounds on tape recorders. It is a lot of fun creating things outside a computer and making it into a musical tool. We would try to add sounds and sync to our songs but of course it didn’t always work. We didn’t even have a 4-track let alone a synth! LOL! I can only imagine what we could have done back then if we had dual core computers and Omnisphere…I’ve always been a sound chaser and this sound as well as the others in Omnisphere are super inspiring. Thank You Diego!

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