Piantar demo Feb 1994 - Mark Daum - Blast from the Past

YouTube via markdaum — May 19, 2008 — "I'll be posting some new music in a few months, when I'm finished recording this jazz album I'm currently working on...but until that time I'm going to post some older videos under the series title 'Blast from the Past'.
Here's the first one.
Hope it does something for you.
Mark Daum


** a quick note: The 'Piantar' is strictly speaking a controller instrument, so as such the overall sound will always reflect what it's hooked up to. This video demonstrates some of the playing technique with what I call the 'basic Piantar sound', which is akin to playing an acoustic guitar or piano.

This is the best demo of the piantar that was captured on film from that early time period.
I had invented it a couple years earlier in 1992, but it was just an idea until late 1993. The prototype I'm playing here was designed by myself and constructed by my brother Mike and I,
and the footage is from a cable show where I also met Shawn Brush for the first time.
The music itself is an improvisation based around a song taken from my first album 'Piantarist', (which is no longer in print). I think it's called 'By your Side'.
The performance is a bit primitive and rough around the edges compared to what I had envisioned, but I had just started playing it a few months prior to this taping.
I did manage to improve my playing significantly not long after this, but it was short lived as I dislocated both my shoulders within 8 months.
Flew too close I guess.
As you can imagine it took me a while to recover from this, and it took me the better part of a decade and lots of starts and stops, to figure out how to approach it so that I didn't aggravate what turned out to be a somewhat chronic condition.
So if you ever saw me perform around this time, and then wondered later, whatever happened to that guy... well now you know.
I'm glad to say however that despite this fairly major set back, these years were very fruitful for me musically...just in different ways.

Now I'm poised to start exploring the potential of this instrument with much better sonic tools at my disposal than I had ever had before...it should be a lot of fun.
Stay tuned."