That piano in Cool Cool Water that sounds like the strings are muted

[puni puni]

Is that how they did it? Smile Sessions says that they were "taped", whatever that means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kANkGBy5lJ4#t=21s
But as you can see, Bruce is playing an organ in the live version. So which is it?

[Aegir]

the live version is completely different. there's a lot more vocal parts on the recording than they were capable of performing live, the organ was supposed to make up for that.

[ontor pertawst]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the prepared piano. It's a way of f***ing with the innards of the piano between where the hammer strikes the strings. You can use anything -- tacks, nails, tape, bits of wood, metal, plastic. You get nice percussive effects or in the case of using tape, the muted effect you mention what with the reduced resonance and whatnot.


Definitely not something you do live, tho!

[puni puni]

That actually looks a lot easier than I thought it would.

Someone should stick tape on their piano strings and try it out.

[guitarfool2002]

If you only put tape on the piano strings, you'll get a muted sound and that's it. Put a microphone on that piano, send that through a tape delay effect or at least an analog delay simulation (no digital delay...), and you'll get much closer to that awesome sound Brian was getting in the studio that day. The engineer even exclaims "That sounds wild!" on the tape, right? 

I'm sure there is one, like a patch named "muted piano" or something, but I can't see how any synth could do that. Even a sampled sound of that...you're not getting the variation of low-mid-high strings. Or maybe someone has designed a sample/sound for that. Have they?

This stuff was found in avant-garde and experimental music from composers like John Cage (and putting the nuts and bolts on the strings), but one famous example of the muted/prepared piano in pop music around the same time was the weird piano break in "Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman, just a year or so after Brian's session. On that one, I heard they laid a blanket over the strings inside that piano for their effect. It really does sound cool.

[keysarsoze001]

He loved that tack piano in those days. Can anyone think what the most recent use of it is on one of his songs? I feel like once he discovered the Moog he more or less abandoned the tack piano sound other than occasional instances.

[ontor pertawst]

There's one on Summer's Gone, Shelter, Strange World, and From There To Back Again. So... yeah, recent use... with a permanently altered tack piano I believe, owned by... er... some famous musician, was it?