Amplified Cactus and Prepared Piano

 

This barrel cactus was set up with a short shotgun mic and a dual pickup system with a customized preamp. The shotgun mic’s response was unenthusiastic. The contact mics however, revealed a series of richly detailed stereo sounds. They are separated here into two racks - plucked.adg and scraped.adg.

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While abroad in Israel, I found my hotel room equipped with a vintage upright piano. After a few attempts to create a conventional upright piano recording, the plan was aborted due to outside noise. Instead, I jammed paperclips, seashells, leaves and pieces of plastic into the piano strings and recorded two octaves of prepared piano tones and noises.

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micah frank