By Bas
Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka, is preparing his show at the Goethe Institute in Amsterdam. In his case this means cases full of accessories and duct tape. Lots of duct tape. He opens the lid of the grand piano, and within minutes it’s full of all kinds of foreign objects. Pieces of wood, bottle caps, a tambourine and the aforementioned duct tape make Hauschka’s piano into the one of a kind instrument he uses for his unique performances.
After the show we
asked him some questions on music, film, and the use of ping pong balls in a piano.
The material of the stuff I use actually matters a lot. The
plastic bottle caps, for example, create a different sound from metal bottle
caps, which are more rattling, which sound more like a tambourine. The plastic
one sounds more like a hard wood block. What I’m mainly doing is using sounds
that create a certain feel of high hats, snares, all kinds of percussion, so
the accessories I use are defintely there for a certain function.
So how
did you come up with using a prepared piano?
It started with John Cage, who used prepared piano because he did not have enough
room on stage for both a drum kit and a piano, so at first it was really quite
practical.
As for me, I wanted to make electronic music
without electronics, without a laptop on stage. To get the percussion in sync
with the piano, the easiest option was to create those sounds with the piano
itself. And then I realised that this created endless opportunities.
Is the
fact that you can do it all by yourself important to you?
Of course, you know, bands I played in often
split up and then the career was over for all people involved. But now I’m by
my self and I can decide if and
when I want to work with other people. I can do a solo concert and it sounds
like more than just a piano, but I can also do a pure piano concert if I want
to.
Does a
prepared piano work better for events like tonight?
Well, for film I think it works much better to
have different sounds, it gives the whole performance much more drama in a way.
With a pure piano, sure it sounds nice but you get more of a traditional
film-score sound, which you don’t want to have I think, especially with the
films shown tonight.
Did you ever do anything like this before?
I did live soundtracks for the silent black-and-white movies The Vampire and The Hands of Orlac several times. And for Thomas Dehmend, a quite well-known German photographer, I made the sound for a video-installation he did.
You did the live horror soundtracks multiple times, does this alter your approach to the music?
Its kind of a similar setup as this event, I think i performed The Vampire ten or maybe fifteen times, but without a set score. I have themes for them, which are developing over time though. I have a theme for the vampire, for the darkness, for the light, for love, a psychedelic theme, and as I use them they develop in a certain direction.
What
aspects of the films did you use as a reference for the music you played?
Well, the dancing video for example, that one
needed some rhythm, but what I
liked that while I was playing, it changed into a more soft and more ambient
atmosphere, and all of a sudden the guy (in the film, ed.) got a completely
different attitude. This actually is something that happens all
the time with my performances. A lot of what I play is focussed, I would not say
on the moment, but it has a lot of spontaneous elements, which I really like.
At home I watched them just once, so all I had was an impression of the tempo I
wanted to play, but that was it.
You
mentioned that you didn’t watch the films with their original
scores.
I don’t like to do that, because when i listen
to the original score I get confused. Maybe I’ll pick up the atmosphere or
unwittingly copy some of it. It’s not my general approach, but in this case I
thought it’s better not to listen to it.
In hindsight I think the show should have
maybe had more silences. But this is something you get more confident with when
you play it multiple times, since that allows you to step back and hold, and
you know you can come back from that later on. But tonight I really wanted to
play, and that’s wat happens, you sometimes play too much.
Check out more Hauschka on his website.
