September 09, 2011

I was contacted by the well-known German organist Hans-Andre Stamm some months ago. Stamm had found my website and was interested in buying a TPX4s Tonal Plexus keyboard to take with him on a trip to France, to demonstrate to some filmmakers the kind of music he is writing for films these days. The time frame was very tight — two weeks. I set up a chat session with Stamm and explained that since I build each keyboard by hand when it is ordered, there must be some lead time, and for an international order, there are some other things which delay the process even more: paperwork requirements, VAT / Duty upon reception, etc., so that it was almost impossible to build and ship a keyboard to Germany in two weeks. But, I was able to work with him to change his order from the more time-consuming 4-octave TPX to an easier-to-build custom 3-octave U-PLEX, and I was able to get it done and shipped on time, as you can see it is the keyboard he is using in this video.

Not only is Stamm well reputed as an organist, but he is also well known in tuning circles, having worked with Martin Vogel on the 7-Limit Just Intonation Pipe Organ. Stamm has written music for that instrument and given performances of his microtonal music in Germany.

You may notice that Stamm's U-PLEX keyboard is somewhat unique — the body of a U-PLEX keyboard is usually white, but Stamm said he preferred the black body. He also said that the colored keys bothered him, and he would prefer only black and white. Since there are gray keys already, the compromise was to make the edge keys white instead of colored. The top panels also changed accordingly, with black background instead of white. The result is the keyboard you see here.

I took a few pictures of the keyboard before shipping it off, as I try to do with every keyboard I build. Usually I also try to record a short video, if there is time. I had about half an hour to record a little improvisation on this keyboard before I sent it off to Hans-Andre in Germany.