The Devil (2017) – spectral textures and altered harmonies on a 15-tone retuned piano
The Devil is Noah Dean Jordan’s first solo album created on a retuned acoustic piano, inspired by his time with the Sonido 13 microtonal pianos in San Luis Potosí and custom 15- and 19-tone guitars built by Ron Sword. For this project, Noah tuned his piano to 15 equal divisions of the octave (15-EDO), discovering that the process of retuning itself transformed the instrument. The loosening of the string tension fractured the piano’s uniform voice, revealing unexpected tonal layers: a resonant piano register, a bell-like midrange, and a brittle marimba-like upper register—creating a prepared piano effect achieved entirely through tuning.
The album explores the haunting beauty of these hybrid timbres, embracing inharmonicity not as flaw but as fertile ground. With each keypress, the instrument splinters into a spectrum of sonic identities, offering a textural and harmonic language that defies traditional form. The Devil is both an homage to mechanical resonance and a leap into microtonal intuition—where the piano becomes multiple instruments, and tuning itself becomes composition.
Bandcamp: https://noahdeanjordan.bandcamp.com/album/the-devil
Noah Dean Jordan 