HAUSCHKA LIVE WITH HIS PREPARED PIANO
Hauschka : At home in my studio I have a grand piano and an upright piano ; each mic ’ d up with six microphones . I have Neumann [ KM 85s ] and M 49s , and some Royer [ R-121 ribbon ] mics [ in a stereo pair ] for the grand piano , but I also have some DPA microphones that are very close to the strings . The DPAs are going into a mixing desk that is next to my piano and that routes the piano into a loop station and different pedals that are chained together , so I can feed , for example , the distortion pedal into a reverb into a delay and loop that , as well , if I want to . When I play live , I have 12 microphones on the piano and I need somebody to control the sound . I remember one gig where the preparations were exploding out of the piano because the bass was resonating so much . At home that ’ s never a problem because I can work in headphones . But transporting that to a live situation is a beast because , say , you want to have a huge bass drum sound like a [ rock ] band , that can feed back into all the mics you have open on the piano .
CM : It ’ s as if you ’ re building a large acoustic synthesizer ?
Hauschka : Exactly . The piano is my oscillator , and if I want to have the pure piano sound on top of everything , it ’ s totally fine , but it can also happen that you don ’ t hear anything that ’ s a typical piano sound . You hear , like , a weird band with detuned elements , or percussion elements that sound a bit robotic . I ’ m a big fan of imperfections , so it can be very groovy , but it can also be more like a sound collage .
CM : For someone who wants to undertake this , but not necessarily from the John Cage perspective – more along the lines of your approach – how would you suggest they start ?
Hauschka : Let ’ s say you don ’ t want to use a real or digital hi-hat . Well , [ ask yourself ] how can I create that ? How can I work with sounds that are , in a way , doing the same thing , but sound special or specific ? So , maybe you take a light filter [ gel ] from a stage light and put that between the hammer and the string to give you a sound like a hi-hat . That ’ s just one example of how you can start finding single sounds that are
56 CANADIAN MUSICIAN