This Web 1.0 webpage is no longer maintained, but will remain online for historical reasons. To stay informed on my compositional activities after 2014, please visit my Weblog. Thanks for 15 good years! - S.H. 2015-10-22

MUSIC FOR PLAYER PIANO

Since my discovery of the amazing work of American Composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912 - 1997) I was fascinated by the idea of a composing for a mechanically driven Grand Piano, which is also called Pianola (yes, the one you see in Western Saloons) or Player Piano. Not the machinery itself drew my attention but by the idea of overcoming the limitations of a human piano player who only has two hands with ten fingers. I liked the idea of using the keyboard in a REALLY independent, freestyle way. - The easiest way to achieve this is to create scores for the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) which can be processed by some contemporary Player Pianos (Yamaha, Seiler).

Learn more on Ego-Shooter (2015) here (in German).

Ocean (2012) is a composition for 2 microtonal MIDI keyboards. Learn more about the concept here (in German).

The three-part Player Piano Sonata 2008 is based on a straight piano improvisation, which was subtly quantized afterwards.

Morphe héroïque is based on Erik Satie's "Prélude de La Porte Héroïque du Ciel" of 1894. A Standard MIDI File of this composition was processed with the Style Morpher software. The result was finished manually in a MIDI Sequencer in 2008.

Piano-Rag Morph is based on Igor Strawinsky's "Piano-Rag Music" of 1919. A Standard MIDI File of this composition was processed with the Style Morpher software. The result was finished manually in a MIDI Sequencer in 2007.

Three Movements and Kadenz were created in October 2005 using Music Mouse by Laurie Spiegel.