Artist Date 5: Sound Painting

Play like a child, but be nice to the piano!
Play like a child, but be nice to the piano!

Here’s Artist Date Idea #5

Play a Piano — or make your own percussion/sound instrument. If this is something you do all the time — mix it up a bit and try playing the piano like Wassily Kandinsky painted (see links below.)

Just make gorgeous, fun, free-form, play-what-you-want Sound! If you don’t have a piano, ask if you can play one in a local church or at a friend’s house when no one’s around.

If you can’t find a piano, line up a bunch of containers on your kitchen counter, fill them with different amounts of water, grab some utensils and make percussive musical sound by tapping away on the containers. Get your BEAT on!

  • A piano is a percussion instrument. Let go of the idea of piano and create your own!
  • Play by yourself, with your ears and your heart as your only audience.
  • Let go of perfection.
  • Be nice to the piano.
  • Stroke the keys. Tap with abandon (cuz no one but YOU is listening) …
  • Make a Sound Painting. You don’t need paints or brushes or canvas to do this! Feel the sounds you make as if they were shapes and colors and smells and wind or breeze or snow or rain or sunlight. Wassily Kandinsky saw colors and forms when he listened to music. He had an unusual but pretty cool “hidden sense” called synesthesia. Make that happen inside you.
  • Don’t worry about the product. Sound is ephemeral anyway.
  • Just Play! Have fun. Be inspired. 
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The artist, Kandinsky, saw colors and shapes when he heard music/sound. Some people with synesthesia taste colors, hear numbers, smell sounds …

Here are some more of Kandinsky’s wonderful abstract paintings for your inspiration: