Puremagnetik has announced the release of Hotel Prepared Piano and Amplified Cactus, two free Ableton Live Packs inspired by the experimental, avant-garde composer John Cage.

Amplified Cactus

Amplified Cactus a la John Cage

Puremagnetik’s free Amplified Cactus Pack includes a drum rack of “plucked”, percussive articulations and a multisampled rack of “scraped” sounds. Rocks, grass, paper and feathers are among the exciters used to create these sound varieties.

Amplified Cactus was recorded using a barrel cactus mic’d with TranceAudio surface pickups and a custom built low-noise preamplifier.

Hotel Prepared Piano

Hotel Room Prepared Piano

Whilst abroad in Israel, Puremagnetik sound developer Micah Frank found his hotel room equipped with a vintage upright piano. After a few attempts to create a conventional upright piano recording, the plan was aborted due to outside noise. Instead, Micah jammed paperclips, seashells, twigs and pieces of plastic into the piano strings and recorded two octaves of prepared piano tones and noises.

Puremagnetik’s Prepared Piano is available as a free Ableton Live Pack that includes a multisampled Rack of the two-octave piano and a selection of effects captured during the recording process.

The packs are available to download at no charge.

More information: Puremagnetik