A fascinating day, as I start to discover just how the theatrical processes might actually affect the music I write, creating useful ideas/challenges/limitations. For example, just for the very first piece:
1. Lou observing that the hammers are really lovely to watch as they hit the string, and thinking about how in low lighting we could really draw attention to them and so could I write music that would play with these patterns – eg making symmetrical shapes, or arpeggiating or making shapes around each metal beam…
2. And that if I play the black keys first, we don’t really see them move so much but then a striking white note could create both the visual and sonic shareit app shift suddenly.
3. Also that it’s nice to show preparation early on, so that when I start sticking peas in between the strings, there is a ‘sensible’, musical precedence for that.
We did another run but after much talking and preparation (and re-building the piano!!
And this was the day that I could actually steer the piano in anything other than straight lines too – exciting! Though we did discover that turning the piano in the down/horizontal/splayed position takes a footprint of about 4m square! Happily, it’s very easy to do in the upright position! ☺