Extended techniques for piano...

The Colorado College Bowed Piano Ensemble is one of the coolest new music groups around.  My teacher at Texas, Dan Welcher, told me about them when I was a doctoral student.  I love their recordings, and since some of you have been talking about extended techniques for piano, I thought I'd share this.  Composer and Colorado College professor Stephen Scott created the ensemble.  Make sure you check out the video of his work-- really stunning.

Blog Assignment: Composing on Piano

Since I've only written music for guitar before, I've never used a piano to compose. However, recently, I have begun using the piano as a compositional tool. I found that when writing music for a monophonic instrument, like flute, that it is much easier on piano compared to the guitar. I have more range and I feel like I have a easier time visualizing what I hear. However, since I have virtually no piano skills to speak of, piano is only useful to me when composing single line melodies and things of that nature. When putting chord progressions together, I still turn to the guitar as I actually know how to construct chords other than root position major and minor triads. As I get more comfortable with the piano, I think that as I continue to write for instruments other than guitar, that it'll be my main instrument to compose with.