Behind the sound · · Tomek Piskor-Ślesicki
Recording Ciemno: when sampling is an interpretation
The Pianet T makes its sound in an odd way. Small sticky pads pluck a row of metal tines. That gives it a dark, slightly veiled tone, unusual among electric pianos.
The dark tone is the whole reason to want a Pianet T, so the easy move is to record it clean and let it speak. I wanted to know how much further the darkness would go if I stopped being careful.
So this is less a recording than a long signal chain with a Pianet at one end. Some of it is rare. Some of it was built for radio engineers, not musicians. One piece came out of a studio where a great deal of early electronic music was made. Together they make Ciemno: my interpretation of what the Pianet was meant to sound like, and never did.
the instrument
- maker
- Hohner
- built
- 1970s
- where
- Germany
- what it is
- Electric piano, sticky pads plucking metal tines
The chain does the work
I commit the character while I track, instead of recording clean and painting the colour on later. By the time a Ciemno note reached the recording medium it had passed through three limiters, three preamps, two rare EQs and a Maihak filter. There is no neutral version hiding underneath. The thickness and the drive are baked in.
Two pieces in that chain do most of the talking. A Gates Level Devil, a broadcast limiter that once belonged to Nils Frahm, leans on the louder notes and gives them a soft distortion and squash. And a Maihak W49 filter, the same model Stockhausen used at WDR, shapes the dark end of the Pianet. It's a big part of why the instrument sounds the way it does.
None of this is subtle, and none of it is reversible. That is the point. I'd rather make the call once, with my ears, while the sound is still in front of me. It's a process that rewards exploration, and the chain responds to what you play.
left: The mechanism of the Pianet. right: a portable Uher tape recorder that inspired the Era knob (well, at least the more civilized part of it).
Two ways to bend it
After recording the Pianet, something was still missing. That's how Era and Resonance came to be.
Resonance is the body of a real upright piano ringing, sampled on its own and set up so the Pianet can resonate the board. Blend it in and the electric tone picks up the wood, metal and air of an acoustic, drifting towards a piano hybrid that was never meant to be.
Era goes the other way. Built from tape and a handful of contrary old machines, it winds the instrument back from 1977 towards the earliest, shakiest days of recording (my exaggerated take on it, at least). Turn it up and the pitch wobbles, the noise floor rises, and the Pianet sounds like a memory of itself played one too many times. It automates well, so crank it at the end of a phrase for some extra instability (try it!).
A darker Pianet
I didn't set out to recreate a Pianet T. I set out to make the version I wanted to play: thicker, darker, a little unstable, and still the same fragile electro-acoustic piano underneath.
What I like about it now is how little it asks of you. One patch, a few controls, and it sets a mood the moment you hold a chord. It does the thing I want an instrument to do: it inspires.
The trial is free, with no time limit. Play it soft to start, then lean on it, then take the Era knob back a few decades and see where it leaves you.
Plugins mentioned in this article:
A 1970s electric piano, pushed somewhere darker
$35
