One part crazy German. Check.
Two parts interesting. Check. Check.
Then a liberal amount of doubt that this piano will be remotely close to listenable. Check.
I create amazing sounds with un-amazing things. Be amazed.
I present to you Volker Bertelmann, or as he's known - Hauschka and his prepared piano. If you don't know what a prepared piano is, you soon will. If you want to skip the history lesson and just see this German do his thing, then jump down to the bottom to the Vimeo player. For those that want to see some other stuff, stick it out up here, because there's another guy I have to talk about: John Cage.
This is John Cage screwing a piano. Honestly.
If you know anything about John Cage, then you know a little something about prepared pianos, and that this guy was a pioneer of experimental everything. I can list all the stuff he's done, but Wikipedia has done such a good job it would break my heart to NOT use that as an excuse to not write it all. I have finals to study for!
The video below is a recreation of the prepared piano John Cage used for this particular piece - which is from Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano."
Now after a brief history lesson: Enter Hauschka, who has taken the idea of a prepared piano to new heights; incorporating elements of electronica and new age sounds to the experimental nature of the prepared piano and has created some great pieces of music which can be found on his MySpace page.
Below is the video from his visit to NPR's studios in November 2010. If you aren't really interested in the set up of the piano, skip to 4:25 for the improvised song.
Taken from NPR:
Listening to a piece by Hauschka can be deceiving: What sounds like an ensemble of musicians and instruments is just one man, performing at one piano. His real name is Volker Bertelmann, and he hails from Dusseldorf, Germany, where he works with his "prepared piano." He wrests disruptive sounds from the instrument's 88 keys by outfitting the strings or mallets with objects such as ping-pong balls, aluminum foil and leather. His new album is titled Foreign Landscapes, and he recently visited NPR's studios to demonstrate his craft.
In this piece, Hauschka uses a random assortment of props just presented to him by host Guy Raz to rig the piano and improvise a song.