Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Fender Rhodes Piano Bass

The Rhodes piano bases its method of sound generation on metal reeds which function much like a tuning fork. These are hit by a hammer action that works in a similar fashion to that of a grand piano action. The asymmetrically designed tuning fork consists of a thin tine and a massive tone bar, which are bolted together. The piano is kept in tune by the mass of a spring which can be moved along the tine. The tine oscillates in front of an electric pickup, similar to that of an electric guitar. This functions along inductive principles, which permanent magnets placed around the tine having a dampening effect on its movement, thereby affecting the sound. (Apple 2007)

The Fender Rhodes Piano Bass features only the bottom 32 keys of the piano.

Present in:

Blueberry
Dense Day Cooling
Here
Sweet Thread (Topple)

Origin: Fender
Year: cir. 1970