Welcome back Brian! I really liked the beached pianos...

Here's more from Rhodes:



The FenderRhodes Piano Bass 1959-75

by Freddan Adlers

The Fender Rhodes Piano Bass came out as the product of Harold Rhodes and Leo Fender doing a joint venture in the late fifties. The 32-note keyboard is the lowest two and a half octaves of a full 73-note Rhodes. The Piano Bass was designed since Leo Fender didn't like the sound of the upper octaves of the piano that Harold wanted to manufacture. The hand-made prototype "X-38" is first shown at a fair in Las Vegas in 1960, but the first time the PianoBass shows up in the Fender program isn't until the 1962-63 catalogue.

"Musicians have found that by adding the Piano Bass to their instrumental group they have achieved the complete and finished sound that is important to every musical organization." Hmmmm....!

This was the only model Mr.Fender allowed Harold to produce, even though there's a whole "family" of FenderRhodes models in the 1963-64 Fender catalogue, and Harold already had protoytypes for an 88-note instrument. The PianoBass was meant to be placed on top of another keyboard to be played with your left hand. A stand was also provided, as can be seen in the next picture. Ray Manzarek of the Doors made this instrument famous.

Rontuner - to carry on the Rhodes Piano theme, this Tuning Fork Tonometer with 661 tuning forks is arguably a very early proof-of-concept prototype, well, sort of!

Leif Ove Andsnes plays a grand piano atop a mountain. See the helicopter ride and interview and a little mountaintop music here as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQyhocSFXQ

What? no little bars to break, or springs to tune? Probably much more useful than a "real" one...



The FenderRhodes Electric Piano Instruction System Models 1967-69

by Freddan Adlers

The Fender Rhodes Electric Piano Instruction Systems probably was Harold Rhodes' dearest project in the -60's. He custom-built whole classroom systems with one Instructor unit connected to a number of Student units. I've even seen pictures of mobile labs installed in a bus! Apart from the Pre-Piano systems in 1946-48, the first systems, to my knowledge, were built in 1967 and had the Gold-top design. Later in the fall of 1968, the Berklee College of Music in Boston ordered a complete classroom with 28 Student pianos and an Instructors console.
Another complete system was ordered for 1969.

At present there are no definite number of how many of these systems that were installed in schools or how many there are left. The system was built so that the teacher could monitor each pupil separately, send a backing track to selected students and to connect two or more so they could play together. Later -70's Rhodes home and restaurant models had similar features like a microphone input, headphones output and a built-in metronome.

Today's DPOTD:

Before:


After:

The Clusterflux is an instrument that performs an endless textural composition. When the piece is active, it produces dense masses of sound (Clusters) that are in continuous transformation (Flux)
The Clusterflux is similar in structure to the soundboard of a grand piano, the central spruce board sprung into a maple frame to maximize its sound amplification. Across it stretch 48 harpsichord strings spanning 4 octaves, tuned to pitches chosen to optimize their potential for sympathetic resonance. An alternating current fuels each octave, creating a magnetic field around each string. The magnets on the spruce board then attract and release the strings, causing them to vibrate, while the soundboard acts as a natural amplifier.
Within these sound masses, each string produces its own sound, constantly transforming between combinations of it's fundamental and it's harmonics. The pitch of each string is governed by its length and tension (limits of means) but this pitch is never stable as the string heats up when active – changing the pitch in constant isotropic glissandi (chance as an extreme case of controlled disorder.) Thus the physical structures (limits) of the piece are always seeking to guide the sound on an asymptotic path towards a stable state but the electrical energy flowing within the piece is tending towards entropy – preventing stability. The balance between energy flow and constraint is key to the long form natural sound structures (as interpreted by physics) contained within its compositional line.

I woke up one lovely morning and found this in my lounge... Well these people did that and built a rotating house to put it in, and as they say down-under - fair dinkum! - and who wouldn't be proud of this Aussy-made piano? Remember this is one of the new modern innovative pianos with extra soft pedal and bridge agraffes...

The piano is called 'Sweet Patooti'. Music plays from the sculpted mosaic (and planted) grand piano, accompanied by the sound of water from the fountain features.

Again, Sweet Patooti!

We haven't posted one for Zorba lately:

a beautiful piano made in 1903 for the White House by Steinway and Sons, depicting America Receiving the Nine Muses.

A 1915 Morley upright.......grand?



(It's English, what can I say?)

Another Zorba would approve of, a 19th century Erard upright:

A 19th century Bluthner art case: