Broken Piano Demo

As my illness entered a fairly sustained and severe phase, I had been looking for ever simpler ways in which to create music in a practical but also metaphorical manner. And so began the relationship between two broken things, myself and the on-it’s-last-legs piano we recycled in Ayr last year.

We’d had it tuned and eased but since our 20 month old was born it has taken a number of hard knocks from him, but perhaps he is just a catalyst with all the hammer-stems eroding. The whole machine is stiff, creaky and fracturing. So that’s the metaphorical bit. The practical bit is me using a portable 8 track recorder, a really cheap but cheerful Tascam DP008 and recording with it because my illness cannot take the wiring and the thinking that goes on behind using my mac as a multitrack recorder. I use the mac instead for finalising. So this recording is the first fairly harsh sounding foray into working with the 8 track and the piano. Only three crudely-mixed tracks, not really mixed cleverly or anything, but made during a very sick week.