Three strings per hammer
Five fragments for the week of May 19, 2025
Hello from the second-to-last week of May. I write this to you from an airport where I spent the night after an impossible connection. Wish me luck on making it home!
Here are five fragments that stuck with me last week…
realizing that the compound returns on my patience have been much worse than the compound returns on my impatience... hmmm....
– David Holz on X, May 17, 2025. (David is the founder of Midjourney.) “Compound returns on impatience” is an idea I can tell I’ll be coming back to.
[David Klavins] got in touch because he wanted me to try The Giant, which he built and is the world’s largest piano. So I drove to Tübingen in south Germany and did a couple of days of recording on that instrument. We talked about my love of very small instruments and he said that he’d always wanted to build a piano that only has one string per note. I’m not sure if you noticed, but a piano normally has three strings per hammer, and that puts almost three times as much tension on the frame. Therefore the frame needs to be heavy, and the whole instrument gets heavy. With one string per note it’s easier to tune, it’s much lighter, it’s much cheaper, and it’s much quieter. I said “That’s my dream instrument!” So he started immediately.
– Nils Frahm as interviewed by wyndhawallace, “On redesigning the piano,” Electronic Beats, June 5, 2014. If my flights work out, I’ll be going to see Nils Frahm play in Oakland tonight. I was hooked by his music, then drawn in by his unusual array of custom instruments, then mesmerized by video of his live performances. This conversation focuses on Una Corda, the custom piano Frahm had built, but touches on his love of custom instruments overall. Also coincidentally featuring Tübingen (!), home of Meshcapade. Don’t miss seeing Una Corda in action.
Like most folks collaborating with a pen plotter, I’ve acquired just about every different style of pen and pencil over the years and am always searching for the holy grail of precision, character, and flexibility.
– James Merrill, “Getting Started With: Fountain Pens,” Machine Arts No. 1, April 2025. (Print only.) I’ve followed Bre Pettis’s work for years, so I was excited to see that his company Bantam Tools has a new magazine out. In his own words: “I have dreamed for years about a magazine that would focus on the artists and artwork that I love.” I read the magazine cover to cover with my feet up on a tree stump in Santa Fe.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I said to myself, ‘We get it. You’re smart. You don’t need to telegraph it,’” she explains. “Whereas in the past, I’m really trying to craft these lyrics. This time I was like, ‘No, be smart enough to let it be really basic. Be plain with language and see what happens.’”
– Lorde as interviewed by Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone, May 15, 2025. “Be smart enough to let it be really basic.” Here for Lorde’s return.
All the data accumulated during the whirlwind tours of the northern counties had reached new heights on our desks, much mail had accrued, several reference questions and other minutiae awaited our attention. The day of reckoning is here!
– “Our Story: Personal Accounts from the Central Pennsylvania Field Office Staff US Newspaper Project 1985-1988,” October 1985. I stumbled across this gem while searching for something utterly different, but was captivated. The drama of project management is ageless.
Until next time,
Diana
https://dianaberlin.com
Saw Nils Frahm last night in LA — it was absolutely amazing. One of my favorite musicians at the moment.