A&I, a Suite for Piano, Android Device and Vibration Speaker

As part of an ongoing work with speakers that use uncommon technologies to project sound, the author considers here the vibration speaker, a kind of transducer that coaxes a surface to vibrate by direct contact. Presenting pros and cons of vibration speakers, the author illustrates a piano suite that uses an application expressly built for Android as an interface between the sound produced in, on, or with the piano and the speaker: The sound is captured by the Android device, processed by the application, sent via Bluetooth to the speaker sitting on the piano soundboard, and eventually thereby amplified. This relatively simple system allows for a large array of timbral possibilities and unconventional ways of playing the piano.