Performance, composition and arranging for the reverse action piano harp - 300 word statement

300 Word Statement - Performance, Composition and Arranging for the Reverse Action Piano Har

The reverse action Piano Harp : innovation and adaptation from Piano and Autoharp

The Reverse Action Piano Harp:Innovation and Adaptation from Piano and AutoharpThe piano is capable of controlling significant polyphony through the detail of voicing and sustain; a unique ability. However it remains a limited and frustrating instrument in terms of its ability to manipulate timbre. Contact with the strings is remote, and timbre inflection limited to note-onset within the capability of its mechanism; its musical output is often likened to visual studies in black and white. From the standpoint of design all musical instruments compromise musical capability in one form or another in order to align with human physical and sensory capability. A full range of expression may be sought by developing expertise on different instruments, but this is frustrating; in terms of expert performance interfaces such as guitar and piano are mutually exclusive — common theoretical structure must be relearned for comparable performance expression. This study explores the potential to create an instrument comprising a set of musical compromises comparable to that of the guitar, whilst remaining adaptive to pianistic technique. It begins with exploration of the autoharp and posits a keyboard variant of this instrument.Practice based research has been undertaken in the form of a prototype series and musical engagement upon the resulting instruments. Five prototypes have been developed, practice engages with aspects of automated design and manufacture, and in the latter stages, working with an exceptional industry based luthier. The resulting instrument has been patented. Musical practice encompasses genres from gypsy-jazz to contemporary experimental music. New works have been commissioned for the instrument and other musicians have played and studied it.Practice is supported through analysis of related forms of musical instrument (which influence the developing design) and the nature of change within musical technology. The result is a new, versatile instrument, with demonstrated capacity to gain traction and to propagate within the musical community

Event Horizon Telescope observations of the jet launching and collimation in Centaurus A

Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of active galactic nuclei at millimetre wavelengths have the power to reveal the launching and initial collimation region of extragalactic radio jets, down to 10–100 gravitational radii (rg ≡ GM/c2) scales in nearby sources1. Centaurus A is the closest radio-loud source to Earth2. It bridges the gap in mass and accretion rate between the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in Messier 87 and our Galactic Centre. A large southern declination of −43° has, however, prevented VLBI imaging of Centaurus A below a wavelength of 1 cm thus far. Here we show the millimetre VLBI image of the source, which we obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope at 228 GHz. Compared with previous observations3, we image the jet of Centaurus A at a tenfold higher frequency and sixteen times sharper resolution and thereby probe sub-lightday structures. We reveal a highly collimated, asymmetrically edge-brightened jet as well as the fainter counterjet. We find that the source structure of Centaurus A resembles the jet in Messier 87 on ~500 rg scales remarkably well. Furthermore, we identify the location of Centaurus A’s SMBH with respect to its resolved jet core at a wavelength of 1.3 mm and conclude that the source’s event horizon shadow4 should be visible at terahertz frequencies. This location further supports the universal scale invariance of black holes over a wide range of masses5,6