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Yann Tiersen, a Master of Musical Sounds

You know how it is when you have thousands of songs and you tend to listen more often to your favorite songs and the new ones? It has been like that for me till Tuesday when I decided to listen to something totally different from the normal. Sliding through my iPod album cover flows, I stumbled upon the famous Yann Tiersen album Amelie From Montmartre and decided to listen to it. I called that famous because I flip past that album at least 10 times a day but I had long tagged the album boring.
I got the album some years ago after listening to a touching animated video on Youtube. I had to go find out the name of the piece, scoured the internet for the piano sheet music. A beautiful song, I had to go get the CD. On getting the CD, I found out most of the songs in it were full of accordion music. I mean, who listens to accordions in this age?

Tuesday morning I decided to stick to this album, at least for the rest of the day. Slowly I was falling in love with the music. In fact, I got used to the music that right now, I can tell his musical signature. A few days ago, I decided to do some research and I totally fell in love with his music.

A french composer who has gone to various music academies, his music and skills totally stand out. He plays the piano the violin, accordion, melodica, xylophone, toy piano, ondes martenot, harpsichord and typewriter. Yes, the typewriter. It was through this research I found out it *sigh* can be used as a musical instrument.

He actually plays the toy pianos on stage!

As far as I am concerned, he does art by blending different natural sounds. In fact, I heard of a particular concert where they actually planned for a train to pass so they could capture the sound.

Yann Tiersen – Esther(clicking this link from a computer will pop out a video)

Watching this concert, I actually thought they were tuning the guitars at the beginning. Apparently, he was playing the guitar like it was a xylophone. Then he plays two toy pianos. Then next they play till a train passes and adds a musical layer to the song. Note how the other guitarist glides through the guitar string for the wooing sound.

In this video, Yann Tiersen uses for sound, water dropping from a tap, a spinning washing machine, the refrigerator hum, a spinning fan

When you listen to things like this, you can’t but think some men are just cut out for stuff like this.

I am personally inspired to do more. I have concluded that Yann doesn’t wait for music to inspire us. He brings out inspiration from music.

3 comments

  • I had the privilege of see him in Toronto last year. He is so amazing!! I have 5 of his cds. But, I just discovered his song Esther today. I now need to find the cd it came from. Thanks for your post!

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