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bandoneonbook
for titanium-powerbook
04
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videostill
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the piece bandoneonbook (2003) builds upon a very special design-flaw, which apple introduced with the titanium-powerbook series in 2001:
the built-in microphone, sitting in the corpus directly next to the left speaker was merrily feedbacking as soon as one tried to use both.
bandoneonbook uses that feedback as a source for sounds and makes it playable with the help of a maxpatch: two parallel filter-lines, controlled by the keyboard allow for an almost independent two-voice polyphony while opening and closing the lid influences the dynamics and the timbral qualitiy of the sound.
the resulting instrument isn´t perhaps best for making people tango around, but has a rather intimate sound, suited for soft and etheric moments.
(in the later aluminum-series, apple corrected the microphone-placing and while its still possible to have that feedback, controlling the volume with the lid has become almost impossible.)
this piece is part of my research into hardware-specific aspects of computers, which can pass as an instrumental quality and as such is part of a series of pieces called "computers as musical instruments".
see video
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