Dead musical instruments... brought back to life by YouTube? Check out this mellotron demo film, a rare trautonium keyboard in some guy's garage, trautonium music by composer Oskar Sala, an original Ondes Martenot, a documentary on the telharmonium (parts 1, 2, and 3), and the Sonovox (used to funny but not-suitable-for-work effect in this parody of Sparky's Magic Piano). Meanwhile, avant-gardists have revived the art of prepared piano, but more mainstream acts such as Tori Amos and Ferrante & Teicher have also experimented with it. Last but not least, another performer of prepared piano is Margaret Leng Tan, but I think she should get more accolades as the best virtuoso of the toy piano since Schroeder from Peanuts.
posted by jonp72 on Jan 31, 2008 - 14 comments

Yahama has made the Rolls Royce of pianos.
'Built around an Intel Pentium III computer chip, the piano allows functions to be controlled by a user's voice and lets the user watch an artist's performance stored on disc while hearing the concert. When the disc is inserted into a built-in DVD player, the performance is displayed on a computer monitor as keys and pedals move up and down recreating the piano part.'
And only $333,000, where do I sign up?
posted by Mark on Apr 5, 2000 - 2 comments