Full Description
With Contemporary Piano: A Performer and Composer's Guide to Techniques and Resources, Alan Shockley provides a comprehensive resource for composers writing music that uses extended techniques for the piano, and for pianists interested in playing repertoire that makes use of techniques and/or implements unfamiliar to them. Shockley explains dozens of ways to prepare a piano without damaging the instrument, how to notate every standard technique and many, many obscure ones, and the specific geographies of every common concert hall piano. This will be the standard reference for pianists touring and playing inside-the-piano repertoire, and for composers at all levels of familiarity with the piano hoping to understand the mechanical miracle that is the modern piano.
Contents
Chapter 1: Notation and Some Piano Basics
Chapter 2: The History and Mechanism of the Piano
Chapter 3: On the Keys and on the Pedals
Chapter 4: Pizzicato, Strumming, Scraping, Rubbing
Chapter 5: Muting
Chapter 6: Harmonics
Chapter 7: The Piano is a Big Box and the Pianist is a Noise-Making Animal
Chapter 8: Bowing
Chapter 9: Preparations
Chapter 10: The Toy Piano
Appendix A: Repertoire
Appendix B: Materials for Piano Preparation
Appendix C: Grand Piano Interior Architecture and Stringing
