Norwegian composer and instrument builder Jo David Meyer Lysne takes the concept of self-playing pianos far beyond their origins in “For renstemt klaver” (For Justly-Tuned Piano).
He transforms the instrument into a resonant body that sings with its own voice — a sound beyond human hands and traditional tuning. Using custom-built electromagnets and meticulously developed technology, Lysne creates a sound world where mechanics, resonance, and microtonality converge. The result is an acoustic and electronic hybrid that redefines the boundaries of what a piano can be, enabling the very space surrounding it to vibrate with sound.
The piano may be without human pianist, but inside it has many alterations allowing it to not only play as any player-piano would, but also generate the otherworldly, ethereal, ambient sounds.
Mounted on steel bars within the instrument are electronic magnets, one per piano key, connected by a tangled web of wires. These magnets descend to the strings, and as they vibrate in harmony with the strings’ natural frequencies, new sounds emerge.
In “For renstemt klaver” (“For justly-tuned piano”), Lysne joins a lineage of musical tinkerers who developed the self-playing piano not as a means of replicating the capabilities of a human performer, but rather as a sonic realm unto itself, producing computer-generated music that transcends human comprehension.
Melding Lysne’s interest in resonance, tuning, and mechanical objects, “For renstemt klaver” originated from a commission by pianist Sanae Yoshida as part of her PhD project on microtonal pianos. Lysne composed a work for Yoshida to play on his bespoke technology, fixated on the long, rich resonance possible on a piano with e-bows, devices that allow one to indefinitely sustain the sound of a string. Lysne became fascinated with the idea of producing such resonance solely on the piano.
With the help of programmer Thom Johansen and piano tuner Jacob Solheim, whose own practice had expanded into just intonation experiments, Lysne began developing his tools. The project culminated in a 12-day composition sprint in Bø i Telemark, where Lysne meticulously tuned, prepared, and wrote for his prepared grand piano in Gulbring Kulturhus, aiming to access a sound beyond the instrument’s normal capabilities.
Each work on the record explores different harmonic and mechanical concepts. The first features a series of tense chords, while the second investigates descending partials. The third showcases Lysne’s first application of “instrumentation”—assigning different roles to treble (steel) strings, which produce a cello or contrabass sound, and copper strings, which have a brassier timbre. Lysne experiments with arpeggios in the fourth, and during the very short fifth, he sends impulses with frequencies different from the strings they interact with, allowing you to hear the whirring of their motors. He gives a folk-like arrangement in the sixth, and then concludes the album by returning to a special chord for Lysne, produced by intervals that create a slow, organic pulse.
