I Bet You Never Tried This!

[steve jones]

"Seeing the guys from Portishead in the studio, and seeing them put an Auratone speaker in the piano, and put a book on the sostenudo pedal — a phone book, huge book. And then with two people, held down a bunch of keys, so just those strings would ring, and played the entire mix into the piano so that the piano is used as a tuned reverb. And then played the tuned reverb back under the track and side-chain compressed it to the beat. And I was like, “I’m doing that sh*t in everything I do for the rest of my life! It is the coolest sounding thing I’ve ever heard."

https://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=39&storycode=11468


Lol, I have to try this!

[arensky]

Cool... 

Reminds me of when a friend and I electrified a harpsichord using guitar pickups; only partially sucsessful, but a lot of fun! 

[steve jones]

Thats it mate, anything for an interesting sound. I work in sound design, so there is little I havent seen or done. But this technique particularly caught my eye - I love the idea of using the piano as a tuned reverb box, that is truely inspiring stuff!

Btw, I bet that harpsicord  sounded brutal. Did you amp it up? I can just see it know through a Plexi stack, with Gould playing it with his teeth 

[cy_shuster]

Very cool idea!  Note that the way the sostenuto pedal works is that you hold down the keys that you want to sustain first, and then press the pedal down to hold them.

--Cy--

[quantum]

You could also put a block of wood under the back of the sostenuto pedal after pressing it down, so as to hold it in that position.  This will free up your foot.