"prepared Piano"

Another great addition to Cinesamples' Artist Series, Randy's Prepared Piano is a collection of 3 pianos recorded at the MGM Scoring Stage and Hollywood Scoring Studios Stage in Los Angeles, California. It features various extended techniques used by Los Angeles studio musician, Randy Kerber.

The original prepared piano and the only samples ever to be authorized by the estate of world-renown composer, John Cage. This particular collection of sounds was created for use in his magnum opus composition, Sonatas & Interludes (February 1946-March 1948). Using his original materials and following the precise instructions found at the head of his published score, various "mutes" were inserted between the strings of the keys, then each note pristinely recorded and programmed to bring you the instrument as Cage himself both envisioned and performed. Forty-five of the piano's eighty-eight keys were prepared, eleven with double preparations; three dynamic levels in five articulations comprise a total of 1,320 samples. This landmark achievement makes an authentic prepared piano, and by extension the works of John Cage, available to sampler owners in one of the most unique virtual instruments ever created.

The original prepared piano and the only samples ever to be authorized by the estate of world-renown composer, John Cage. This particular collection of sounds was created for use in his magnum opus composition, Sonatas & Interludes (February 1946-March 1948). Using his original materials and following the precise instructions found at the head of his published score, various "mutes" were inserted between the strings of the keys, then each note pristinely recorded and programmed to bring you the instrument as Cage himself both envisioned and performed. Forty-five of the piano's eighty-eight keys were prepared, eleven with double preparations; three dynamic levels in five articulations comprise a total of 1,320 samples. This landmark achievement makes an authentic prepared piano, and by extension the works of John Cage, available to sampler owners in one of the most unique virtual instruments ever created.

John Cage is one of the giants of 20th century contemporary music. His composing, performing and philosophy are intertwined, and Cage has influenced innumerable composers and performers in classical, jazz and rock music. Cage has made a life's work out of music-as-sound and sound-as-music. This disc is a re-release of two albums from the mid-'60s of pieces Cage wrote in the late 1930s. Yuji Takahashi (himself a composer) plays "sonatas" for "prepared piano," an innovation by either Cage or Henry Cowell, where the piano has small objects inserted within to alter the sound. These pieces are short and sparse, with the piano producing tones similar to an mbira (African thumb piano) or a koto. The music is reminiscent of Erik Satie's piano music, but darker and more percussive, with a haunting, questing quality. Cage, with his (then) radical conceptions, "liberated" the piano from all the established notions of how it should sound, and open it―and music in general―to limitless possibilities.

Cain and Abel: War Dances for Prepared Piano is the second contemporary composition by the experimental pianist Christian Grifa, transcribed and set to music by paraphrasing bold sequences of notes on the score, along the lines of those of the previous composition, which develop in an anachronistic way the most classic of the biblical episodes after the creation of Man through God (the death and the killing of Abel at the hands of his brother Cain), and at the same time outline sacred, profane, philosophical and historical themes, highlighting the interesting archetypal reasoning that gravitates around the orbit of the same episode, on the which still today the man reflects, and asks himself important questions, without however being able to find a precise answer, bringing back to the mind and to the listener's ear a reflection of the key musical theme of the previous piano piece prepared "Hymn to the Earth”.

"Silence. Sounds are only bubbles on its surface. They burst to disappear."

Written in 1946-48 for prepared piano and recorded in 1975 by Joshua Pierce, Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano by John Cage (WER 60156-50) represents the culmination of his work with the solo prepared piano, which had been his musical invention a decade before. Essentially, into the bed of piano strings he put such objects as large wooden screws, bolts of various sizes, pieces of plastic and rubber. In short, a panoply of devices were used that forever transformed the sounds of the ordinary piano strings, which showed his colleagues that Cage should not only be remembered as an important composer, but as a renowned inventor as well.

Beware. This is not your ordinary Joe-sixpack music. Download at your own risk!