Player Piano 3

Blow-your-mind pieces for player piano, written in the mid 20th century. Incredibly good and well-worth a listen. At times there are thousands of notes within a few seconds. Some sound serialist, some jazzy, some just insane(ly good). Many of them are canons with one voice going at one tempo and another voice going at another tempo, at all these funky math ratios. Nancarrow is most known for his 50 studies for player piano. He's largely self-taught, American but lived in Mexico from age 28 on because he fought for the Communists in the Spanish Civil War. This recording sounds more like a real piano/person than other recordings I've heard, clearer.

1. Starts low, sparse compared to other tracks, notably melody.
2. Meandering, questioning.
3. Dense clusters skitters fast spazz.
4. Catchy off-beat, mid-slow.
5. Fast, spazzy – you can differentiate the voices more clearly here than on other tracks.
6. Jazzy.
7. Cascading, heavy on chords.
*8. Soft, close intervals, intriguing. Study in tone lengths.
*9. Bass starts kinda slow, treble ridiculously fast/swirly – gradually the bass speeds up and ascends and the treble slows down and descends, until they meet – then insane fast to the end. Insane fast. Insane. Yes!!!!!!!!
10. Plodding heavy deliberate.
11. Varied, almost sounds like a regular 20th century classical piece. Jazzy.
*12. Varied. Swung. Alternates between super dense and not super dense. Cool. Sweet repeated notes. Crazy and beautiful ending.
**13. Most varied and loosely structured – sounds improvised. Pretty pretty glissandos. Pedal. Surreal.
14. Heavy plodding dissonant chords.
*15. Poking, disjunct rhythm, polyrhythms. Parts are *insanely* dense. Ridiculous.
16. Poking, ascending and descending, lighthearted, like off-beat scale exercises.
17. Kinda groovy, repeated notes and chords.
*18. Jazzy, rockin', prepared piano. Influenced by Cage.
19. Clear melody, calming, very Bach.
20. Wandering, poking, not impossible-sounding, sounds serialist.