Quiet Simplicity by Mike Hans STEFFL

My piano has been with me since my youth, but in recent years it has stood unused in my studio. Despite the many memories it holds, it was only a few months ago that I really noticed it again. It is an old Blüthner piano and was probably built in Leipzig around 1936. Not a particularly remarkable upright piano, but a solid instrument of recognized quality. It was a gift from my uncle in Chicago and opened the door to the world of music for me in my youth. After a thorough repair, tuning, and polishing, I immediately fell in love again with the depth and warmth of the typical Blüthner sound. The lyrical and resonant sound awakened in me an irresistible desire to integrate it into my world of synthesizers. To learn more about the sound of my revived piano, I played some very simple and quiet improvisations and relied on just two synthesizers for the fusion with electronic sounds.
MOOG Muse and ASM Hydrasynth provided the electronic tones. Although both synthesizers generate their characteristic sounds on different engines, they complemented the piano sounds in a rather fascinating way. It is probably Blüthner's typical sound generation that allows the synthesizer sounds to blend in so beautifully. The bright and fully resonant Blüthner piano absorbs the rich textures of both synthesizers and gives the attentive listener the feeling of a new “sound engine.”
This is the first impression of my little sound exploration into the fusion of acoustic piano tones and electronic synthesizer sounds.

Tracklist

1.	Questions	5:15

2.	Possibilities	7:03

3.	Connections	6:29

Credits

released November 7, 2025

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