Prepared Music? Why do you need to prepare it.

Hey hey people. Is time for another music appreciation or rather music bites.

Prepared piano Screws Bread Clip

Chomp Chomp Chomp! (Feeling so hungry now after composing the first few lines..)

So what is? prepared music?.. you are probably wondering.. Hmm Is it the practices a performer have to do before each performance. There is this Chinese saying "台上一分鈡，台下十年功" which means you need ten years of hard work to perform a single minute on stage.

.. or is it the fine tuning of musical instruments before the show, getting their tune to sync.



Nope. They are both incorrect. Prepared music is part of experimental music popularized yet again by our famous Minimalist Musician, John Cage.  Check my previous posting if you dont already know who he is.

Although Cage did not invent the prepared piano (Yeah he did not. Interestingly I found a book which gives me the wrong information) but he was certainly the one who had made the technique famous..

Prepared piano is just a more specific coined term for prepared music.. for prepared music you can basically have any kind of prepared instruments.  Eg. prepared guitar, prepared drum,..  A prepared bowl of maggie mee..

So much talking! so how you prepare an instrument? what is the gist of it!?
Okok to prepare means you do something to the instrument that will change its original timbre (Timbre or Colour they are the same thing ). Usually by the means of using foreign objects.

Since Cage used prepared piano for his music I will be focusing more on it. There are various items that can be used for a prepared piano.. Cage prepared his piano by putting forks, screws, paper clips and blah blah blah.. between the strings.. By doing that it alters the sound, giving each of them a new character.. producing sounds of twang zang, thuds and rattles..
Yeah live demonstrations.. Below..

John Cage's Prepared Piano w/ Stephen Drury

Hauschka at NPR: Improvisation

So now you know what is a Prepared Music? Great! Now that you are able to appreciate music more..Go Spread the knowledge. :)

Ps: Please do not try and put any weird stuff in/on your piano if you have one. It may cause damage to your piano. 

小朋友不要学，这些叔叔是有練過的哦 哈哈。