Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

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Shooshie
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Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

Post by Shooshie »

A recent post got me thinking about a project I helped to create in the 1990s. Many of you will remember the five piano project, for I've posted about it many times in the forum. I thought maybe I'd post a picture this time, and a sample of the music, which to my knowledge is no longer available new, but there are a couple CDs on Amazon from 3rd parties.

We used five Yamaha Disklaviers, one of which was played live by the late pianist, Ariel, who didn't need five pianos to sound like it. He was from the Soviet Union and had immigrated to the USA for musical freedom to play the pop and rock music of our generation (1960s onward). In the USSR he had been a classical pianist, and it showed through a powerful technique which ranged from exquisitely sensitive to thunderous. In the 20-odd years that we were close, I never heard him miss a note, and he could re-arrange anything as he played, to make it sound completely different. When he wasn't touring, he was playing at some of the world's best hotels, such as the Phoenician in Paradise Valley, Arizona, or the Bellagio in Las Vegas. At the latter, his was the first music you heard when you came in the big front lobby with the Chihuly glass ceiling. He entertained at the Petrossian Lounge, which Bellagio owner Steve Wynne reportedly designed with Ariel in mind.

Ariel and his manager came to me in 1990 and asked if this idea would be possible. I did some research, went over to a local piano store and tried out a Yamaha Disklavier, read the manual, and started working out technical problems with Performer (pre-Digital Performer). I reported back to them that yes, it would be possible, but only after MOTU released the MIDI Time Piece, which had been announced but not released yet. For proof of concept, I flew to Hollywood and we tried it with three pianos, all that I could handle with the Opcode MIDI interface that I had at the time. It sounded great. The MTP would be out in another month, so we reconvened in Fountain Hills, Arizona, where our manager had rented a huge house on a golf course, where we set up 5 Disklaviers and began arranging classic rock tunes. I'll skip the rest, except to say that every day we ran into new problems, both musical and technical, and every day we solved them and made more music. It was worth it. The show was a huge success on tour.

Here's an 11 minute medley of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. All effects are acoustic, all piano. No electronics were used to alter any sound. Listen to it loud; butane lighter optional.

Below is a picture of a scene from Ariel and the Power of Five, the name our producer gave to the touring show. Believe it or not, this show sold out nearly every hall in which we performed. We did many tours from Florida to California, Texas to Michigan, to great reviews. I don't think we ever got a bad review. It was about to be a permanent Las Vegas show at the Bellagio Hotel when Ariel died suddenly and tragically in 2007. [Click picture for full size]
Image

We had a lighting crew, but most of the lights and all the moving lights were controlled from Digital Performer, creating lighting effects that could be described as "architectural" that changed and moved with the music, tastefully, never distracting from the music. I think we were ahead of the curve on that one. The lighting people we consulted said it couldn't be done. There were no instructions to be found except for the MIDI Show Control spec, and MSC wasn't used on most of our lighting instruments. Each had MIDI interfaces, but they were complicated and each was different. Performer handled it all like a champ. Nobody had seen effects like that in concert before with precision timing perfectly interacting with the music.

I demonstrated the first cue called from Performer to an Intellabeam (moving light) in the shop at Sunbelt Scenic in Phoenix, Arizona, in January, 1993. As I was setting it up, all the employees at Sunbelt Scenic stopped what they were doing and gathered in the shop. I think there was some betting going on. When we had everything connected and the cues written, I hit Play in Performer and the Intellabeam leaped into action. The shop roared with applause. This was the company that did the lights for all the major rock groups that performed in Phoenix and other parts of the Southwest, and that was literally the first time any of them had seen lights controlled by a MIDI sequencer. I had been guessing how to do it at every step of the way. Luckily, I guessed right, with the help of Charlie Richmond's MIDI Show Control Spec Sheet.

The 7th anniversary of Ariel's death will be in about a month. Seems fitting to post something about him. Thanks for reading.

Shooshie
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Dan Worley
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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

Post by Dan Worley »

The talent in this is stratospheric.

"Us and Them" brought tears to my eyes.
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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

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Magnificent!
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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

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Excellent.


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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

:headbang:
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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

Post by Shooshie »

Thanks guys, it's nice of you to say so. I had many favorites within our repertoire, but this was special. If the others were created by skill, this one was created with magic. There are reasons for it which i won't go into here. We had a collaborative partnership, and Ariel had final say on everything, which is as it should be. First, I always have to give credit to the original writers and performers of the music we were working with, and there's no question that Pink Floyd's own recording of Dark Side of the Moon was riddled with genius.

Some trivia about the arrangement:
• Some things best left alone
We toyed with the idea of working in some kind of arrangement of the female vocal, which is my favorite part of the album, but finally accepted that some things are best left as they are. I'm not saying we couldn't come up with something great, but that vocal was like a comet; any light show homage to a comet simply falls short, for it stands alone in the sky, unattainable, unsurpassable. Similarly, any piano arrangement of a spectacular vocal performance would be reaching too far.


• The Phantom Melody
There's a phantom melody near the end. At 10:32, we're in a quick ¾ in G, having just been through 4 cycles of 8 bars each, with all this flourish and sound building up to the climax. Then you get to 10:32, the beginning of two more rounds of 8 bars. That's where the phantom melody begins. You hear:
  • |G______| G__A_B_ | D____B__| G_____|
    |G______| G_A_Bb_| A____F#_| D_____|
But that melody with those notes does not exist. It's not in the arrangement. Oh, it was intended for you to HEAR it, but the notes aren't there. Why? Well, first, the keyboards were busy. Those notes just were't available. Then where are they? They're done with harmonics:
Transpose the melody up an octave an a 5th. Then double that at a parallel 6th. Why?

Ok, some background: I had read an article in Popular Science when I was a kid in which they explained that AT&T was having trouble with clarity in their telephone receivers. The earpiece sounded wrong. So, they took out the fundamental, and when pressed against your ear it sounded like what you expected it to. The ear added the fundamental. It's like an optical illusion in which your eye provides context that isn't there. The ear can do that, too, and it made telephone calls understandable for everyone.

I wondered if we could shift the melody to a harmonic and still hear the fundamental, especially since the fundamental was already all over the place in the music. The first time we heard it was one of those strange moments when you learn something you can't fully explain. The melody was there, clearly, but when you were there in person, with five pianos around you, this melody was suddenly coming from somewhere else. It was disembodied from the pianos, hovering over them like some kind of ghost. It didn't sound exactly like a piano, either, but some instrument befitting such a spectre.

When Bob Doerschuk from Keyboard Magazine interviewed us, I showed him that trick and he didn't believe his ears. Or me. I had to go into the MIDI and let him watch me turning tracks on and off. I think I saw a guy's mind get blown in real time right then and there. He sputtered and couldn't speak.

The effect was wonderful, but it played havoc with sound systems, such that depending on where you sat in the hall you might not hear all of it. Later, I sacrificed some of the stuff in other keyboards and put the notes in where they belong. In the recording linked above, I think the effect was still in play. You may notice how it isn't consistent. But heard live without amplification, that was truly a wonderful little effect. I've since noticed that Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Skryabin do things sometimes that get results similar to that, but I don't know if those were intentional. Well, they were intentional, but probably for different reasons, and arrived at by different thought processes. Of course, those guys were the best of the best.

• Altered Sounds... Naturally!
In the opening bars of Us & Them, you hear a background figure at 4:45. It has a different, pleasant timbre. There are many examples of such sounds all through the songs. I created those with harmonic doublings. Depending on the harmonics you choose, the sounds can be pleasant, organ-like, or grating like nails. An example of the latter occurs at 9:20, when the melody returns to "The lunatic is on the roof..." That obnoxious sounding example is also offset a little to mess with the time. We were going for "lunatic."

• The Whole-Step Piano Slide
There are dozens of effects, and I won't describe them all, but one more deserves attention. At 0:27, just after the intro, there's a melody that comes from that instrument that so distinguishes the sound of Pink Floyd. I forget the actual name, but essentially it's a slide guitar. I had a problem when I was creating that melody. I wanted it to slide on certain notes, the way they do it. Of course, we're talking about a whole step. Not a lot of sliding you can do in a whole step on a piano. So, I did a pair of parallel octave chromatics. For rising slides, it starts on the note with an octave lower, and both do a quick chromatic slide of a 9th. But here's what makes them work. The main octave fades to nothing as it rises chromatically, while the lower octave fades FROM nothing to the proper velocity as it arrives at the destination note, one step above the starting note. So, parallel chromatic octaves fading oppositely out and in over the span of a 9th, create the effect of motion while only effectively covering a whole step. The ear hears a whole step slide.

The effect became a little blurred, as Ariel wanted more decoration in there, and he liked my chromatics. So, we ended up putting a lot of meandering chromatics as decoration. But if you can distinguish between the slides and the other, you will still hear the effect of the one-step slide on a piano.

We had done four or five other songs before we tackled this one, which was good because it took a while to get our collaborative process worked out. Sometimes, the music calls for Ariel just to record what he wants to do. Other times it needs me to work out something for five pianos that may not even be playable with hands. It was a constant give & take, with Ariel directing his ideas, then I would direct my ideas, and we'd each modify the other's work so that it became stronger and more suited to the medium. When done, Ariel would learn his parts from our arrangement, and sometimes he'd learn our arrangements on one piano for his solo work. It was amazing to hear him play solo one of our arranged songs, and to hear that he was getting about 95% of what we put in for FIVE pianos.

His best solo piano works, in my opinion, were his Beatles songs. We did a few for the pianos, but he was at his best when playing those solo. If you ever get a chance to hear those, don't pass it up. (there are CDs, but they aren't available anymore) When we were touring, piano teachers from grade school through university would come to hear and often bring their students. Some universities asked him to lecture about his technique. He was uncomfortable talking about it. He'd give me tips, but only when I was playing and he was just passing by. I never asked for lessons. What he didn't like was disparaging arguments, criticism, and having to defend the way he does things. If he told you a technical trick, then you said "but doesn't it work better THIS way?" he'd always say "yeah, probably. Your way is right. Forget what I said." I mean, this was a guy who could do anything at the keyboard, 100% right, night after night, and whose arrangements always had more parts running simultaneously than seemed physically possible with 10 fingers. His ideas and playing were't pianistic, but orchestral. He felt out of place around pianists. So when a well-known piano teacher would write about how amazing his playing was, he was particularly happy, for it meant that someone "got" him who had the knowledge and understanding — the authority — to say so.

We butted heads a lot, but at the end of the day we were always best friends. Sometimes I'd come hear him play at the hotel, and maybe I'd get up to leave before his set was over. He would quickly segue into Dark Side of the Moon, and when I'd hear those opening bars, I knew he wanted me to stay, so I'd sit back down. There were lots of musical jokes he'd work into a set — things only he and I would know, and he'd glance up to see if I was laughing. I was.

Sorry... I'm reminiscing. Yeah, I miss the guy. Ariel was hard-headed and often difficult to be around, but he loved so openly that you couldn't help but love him back. He'd do anything for his friends, and that perhaps was his real reputation among people who knew him, even more than his piano playing. He'd had a lot of help since coming to this country, and he knew it. He wanted to give back to the world, every day.

I'll stop now. Again, thanks for reading. Maybe in knowing a little more about Ariel, you'll understand a little more about me, too.

Shoosh
|l| OS X 10.12.6 |l| DP 10.0 |l| 2.4 GHz 12-Core MacPro Mid-2012 |l| 40GB RAM |l| Mach5.3 |l| Waves 9.x |l| Altiverb |l| Ivory 2 New York Steinway |l| Wallander WIVI 2.30 Winds, Brass, Saxes |l| Garritan Aria |l| VSL 5.3.1 and VSL Pro 2.3.1 |l| Yamaha WX-5 MIDI Wind Controller |l| Roland FC-300 |l|
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Re: Dark Side of the Moon on Five Pianos

Post by Shooshie »

Since this has turned into a thread about my old friend Ariel, here's an old video of him being himself at a birthday party of a friend in Scottsdale, circa 1995. While this is pretty much the way he was when performing, this is no gig; all these people were friends of his or family of his friends. I recognize most of them and remember the evening, but since we worked together all day every day, I generally went other directions in the evenings, and this night I was out with a friend who took me to eat at a very nice restaurant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeEk8vKspAQ

Shoosh
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