Steffen Fahl: Klassik-resampled

Steffen Fahl: Klassik-resampled

Digital interpretation

a) Music and software – an approach

Klassik-resampled contains 250 articles with 486 mp3-recordings of together nearly 24 hours length with a variety of classical pieces. All are played or programmed by myself with sampled instruments. Sampled instruments are sample libraries with thousands of single note recordings (=sample) which allows one to emulate original instruments with nearly all sounds and sound variations they might produce. Since this technology originates from popular music, I also first tried it with popular kinds of music. It might be funny to program a metal-version of Paganinis 24. Capriccio in A, it might be likewise funny, to let traditional instruments play music we would expect to hear from synthezisers as in my stringquartett on the letters of “Steffe(n) Fahl”. Musically it seems to me more demanding to use those sample libraries to program musically reasonable digital interpretations of classical masterworks. The idea is to apply the appropriate samples to each single tone of the complex classical compositions. Some recordings here (Bach, Haydn, Liszt) are also played in realtime on a midikeyboard like you play it on a real piano and the in this way recorded mididata edited later. But likewise those Midi datas were edited detailed and diligently to shape the sequence of samples to a telling musical speech. How a traditional interpretation might compare with a digital interpretaion is shown in this french Blog, which confronts the YouTube video of a young belgian pianist with my digital interpretation of the same brilliant piano piece.

The fields of utilization

b) The fields of utilization

The first projects were the complete recording of the Well tempered Piano Vol. 2 by J.S.Bach, of Haydns complete Pianosonatas and of Liszts complete concertstudies which all were played first on a piano-like midikeyboard. The recorded Midi data was edited then detailed and diligently. While other recordings like pop, ensemble- or other orchestral pieces are totally based on programmed data that is often derived from digital transcribed partitions. Since classical music established a rich musical language, some of my digital interpretations became a proof for the capability of ambitious sample libraries like Synthogy (Massachusetts), EastWest Quantum Leap (California), Fable Sounds (New York) Vienna Symphonic Library (Wien) and realsamples (Karlsruhe). Beside traditional pianomusic there are also some recordings of historic keyboards as well as some others some rare pianistic pieces of the classical and romantic repertoire, some ensemble- and orchestral pieces used like that.
For my article about Robert Kahn in the online-dictionary LexM of the Hamburg University, I produced some digital interpretations right from previously unpublished manuscripts of a pianoquintett, a movement of Suite for Orchestra and a movement of a cantata. For my own musical interest I produced the obviously worldwide first recordings of the Pianosonata f-minor op.19 by Jean Louis Nicodé and the only published 8 Pianopieces by Elisabeth von Herzogenberg which was a giftet Pianist and one of the people around Johannes Brahms.

Steffen Fahl: Klassik-resampled