Conlon Nancarrow, Studies 2B, 3a, 3e and 5 for Player Piano

[woodencardboard]

He's almost as fast as Art Tatum.

[9Kino3]

Nancarrow: a perfect mix of objective and subjective.

[cullanpiano]

Are these his first recordings of the works? They sound like the original LPs and I recall the later CDs were slower and recorded with more reverb. These recordings, wherever they're from, are fantastic.

[alexandergreenb]

Has anyone else done pieces for player piano?

[banjuja58]

@alexandergreenb check out "Circus Galop" by Marc-Andre Hamelin on Youtube.

[maegamikirisugi]

omg@@@@@@ love this etudes!

[pattister]

AWESOME. Icebreaker did an arrangement of Study 2B on their album Cranial Pavement, I just listened to it. SO awesome!!

[zarwarrior]

Polyrhythms at its best. It couldn't be played or composed in a much better polymetric order.

[DarkZekeX]

is this from a CD? I love the sounds of these recordings, I'd like to buy them on CD

[GreggaryPeccary]

@DarkZekeX Yes, I've posted the link in a channel bulletin. You'll have to import it fom Germany

[DarkZekeX]

@GreggaryPeccary what do you mean by channel bulletin? I'm sorry I'm a little confused, I don't know where on the channel page to look for that.

[GreggaryPeccary]

@DarkZekeX Just go to amazon (dot) de and search nancarrow player piano. It's the DG Scene recordings

[ViewerNotes]

funny as hell!

[ViewerNotes]

funny as hell.

[jsymons1985]

1:10 !

[sekki108]

if I heard a player piano playing study 3a, I would either 1. be expecting it to spark and fume and/or explode, or 2. think the world is ending and flying spaghetti monsters are in fact seizing all over the piano and coincidentally playing something on the demo roll of the player piano.

either way, scary, but interesting.

[xkyousukex]

I have a little doubt.

Is this able to play for a person? Did someone tried it already? Or is it just recorded and only to listen?

[prosapiensable]

This is an early work, the artist was experimenting with the speed of compositions. Normally composers ciompose for humans. AFAIK, He proposed a question "How would the composition change if we could handle higher speed ?"

[xkyousukex]

Oooouuuuh.

[ibold1000]

Hmmmm. A little jumbled up It would sound better if it was written more in order. Sounds impossible to play!

[GreggaryPeccary]

Who said it's not in order?

[TheGaetano62]

@GreggaryPeccary some fukin stupd

[rhythmaxo56]

thats kinda the point of the player piano

[prosapiensable]

it was not composed to be played by human.

[ibold1000]

Ohhhh! Really! Now i have a total new view on this composer!

[maraxus83]

well, that's exactly the point! The irony is right there!

[DarkZekeX]

@ibold1000 its done using player piano so that the music isn't restrained by human playing limitations :D

[mephyman]

Wow, this sounds great on here... better than the CD... thanks for posting!

[betokkikke]

A genius! Brt authorities got confused, didn't take him seriursly - as far as México National University UNAM s concerned, died and his will gave all music belongins to UNAM but abandoned and left unheard, until came a Swiss offer to buy Nancarrow heritage and got it quickly. Thanks for the great music!

[KawhackitaRag]

Also, notice how he starts number 5 by quoting bits of the melody to "Sweet Georgia Brown". Then he adds his usual fill-ins and stalking bass notes.

Am I the only one on here who actually "gets" this music on some level?

I love the video-game sounds at the end: from about 8:20 on it becomes VERY difficult to believe that this is really an acoustic piano and not some FM synthesis sound. Part of the key (besides the prepared piano) is the exact note-on, note-off touch that Nancarrow cut.

[krring]

Ah yeah, those are the Nancarrow moments I (superficially) live for, when everything suddenly breaks some threshold and you feel that nothing on earth, let alone a piano, should be capable of making such a sound! A momentary moment in which you're stripped of everything you thought you knew about linear time.

[KawhackitaRag]

haha, I hear some Gershwin in this one! Especially starting at 0:36 - doesn't that sound Gershwinesque?

I love the call-and-response in the first piece!

study number 3a is as good of a repetition-tester as I've ever heard in any player piano test roll! In fact, given the amount of notes that are playing PLUS the high repetition rate, I think this roll would make a BETTER test roll! That left-hand is like a MACHINE man! (LOL) my boogie-woogie friends just shat themselves listening to this.

[BwanaTube]

Interesting to hear these pieces on the Bösendorfer after listening to them for decades on Nancarrow's own hardened hammer pianos. Had the original vinyl records, and the original CDs. Looks I need to find these!

[exackerly]

But did they have to be transcribed to use the Ampico system? That would be a big job!

[BwanaTube]

No, the original rolls were made for an Ampico player. Not sure what's involved in duplicating rolls, but I suppose that could be quite a task to do accurately with the nature of Nancarrow's work.

[KawhackitaRag]

Modern roll recutters generally use a special scanner to read the roll into the computer. The resulting long image file is then converted into data, and the data analyzed on a program to determine the original punch matrix ("grid" where the holes would be on the master roll). Once this is rediscovered, then the roll can be reproduced with complete fidelity.

Nancarrow's rolls, being hand-cut with extremely fine rhythmic distinctions, must be especially hard to reproduce.

[borisblues]

the father of shred..lolz

[LarkinFarkin]

Thanks for posting. I heard Conlon some years ago. It´s very interesting.