bandoneonbook

for titanium-powerbook

04


videostill

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 isnĀ“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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