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Introduction

 

References

1: Introduction 

2: Research Questions

3: Artistic Research

4: The e(c)lect(r)ic guitar 

5: Mechanical forest 1

6: Mechanical forest 2

7: Interlude 

8: Mechanical forest 3

9: Epilogue 

10: References

 

Acknowledgements

 

First, I would like to thank my girlfriend Annelin for supporting me, and my daughter Ulla Sofie for grounding me through this project (not to mention my dog, Cooper, for taking me out for walks). 

 I would also like to thank all those involved in this project, both as musicians, sparring partners, collaborators, inspirators and technicians. 

 Thanks to Dag Egil Njaa for helping me with technological development, as well as being a sparring partner. Your contribution to this project has been crucial.

 Thanks to all the great musicians involved, especially Eva Bjerga Haugen, Ståle Birkeland, Arild Hoem, Kristoffer Alberts, John Derek Bishop, Espen Eidem, and Hans Jacob Bjorheim. 

 Thanks to Therese Markhus, Runa Nordheim, and Petter Frost Fadnes for all your input. 

 I would also like to thank Tou Scene, Ole Reidar Gudmestad, Tord Knutsen and Bjørnar Mæland.

 This project had not been possible without the guidance of my supervisors, Per Zanussi and Jill Diana Hjørnevik. Your knowledge, passion, support, and patience has been more important than I can put into words. 

 Thanks to the following financial supporters for making the concerts possible: Kulturrådet, Fond For Utøvende Kunstnere, Stavanger Kommune, Rogaland Fylkeskommune, Vestnorsk Jazzsenter and Norsk Jazzforum.

 Thanks to my brother Bård, for introducing me to the guitar. 

 

My ambition was just to be able to play guitar.

Angus Young 

 

Prologue

1990 

I remember sneaking into my brother’s bedroom when I was 12 years old. Not to steal candy or one of his cool metal band t-shirts. You see, my brother played guitar, and he was rather good at it. He had a pink Ibanez electric guitar, built for playing really fast by people with long and big hair. At the time, this guitar was the coolest thing in the world to me. So, I used to sneak into his room just to try to learn how to play it. I figured out how to play the basic chords as well as the most important of them all: the power chord. After a couple of months, I formed a band, and suddenly I was able to make music without really knowing what I was doing. In some ways I feel that I never really started playing guitar, it just sort of happened. Years later, I still feel a bit like I did when I was sitting in my brothers’ room. I’m still trying to figure out what I can do with this instrument. 

2001

Leeds, England. I’m sitting in a small room with a blue carpet, white walls and a red light that will switch on if the decibel level is too high (if lit up, the power will turn off), trying to play the changes of yet another jazz standard tune. The sound from the small Polytone amp was as dry as the room and its acoustic. I almost felt like a character from the TV show «The Office», sitting in a cubicle, treating music like it was selling office supplies. I’m not sure what I had expected, but this room seemed very far away from the stages I was dreaming to play on. The blinding stage lights, smoke machines, huge guitar amps and PA were replaced with a blue carpet and a sound meter. So this was how you became a jazz guitarist? Was I really about to become a jazz guitarist? 

 

Leeds. How did I end up here? Ok. I wanted to have a music education. I played electric guitar, I loved to improvise, so then I guess I must study jazz. Jazz is improvisation. Improvisation is Jazz. Or so I thought. One year prior, I was a jazz student for the first time, at Rogaland Musikkonservatorium in Stavanger. I remember that we were all a bit high on the situation: We are music students! We used to book rooms every day and evening to play together. One day (I guess it must have been close to the start of the first semester), I was asked by two other guitarists to come and play with them. One was a German guy who already had a BA in jazz from Germany (I think he was taking a one year course in studio work), the other guy was one of the biggest jazz geeks I’ve ever met. The two of them decided that we should just play a blues. Phew…a blues, I know the blues, I thought to myself. We started playing, but they were playing something different to me. A blues in jazz was very different from the 3-chord blues I had learned. I think this was the first time I realized that to “master” jazz would be a bit different than I had thought. When I moved to Leeds the following year, I moved in with 6 other people, all students at the same Music College. The first thing I heard was a jazz guitar blasting through changes like the guy had not done anything else his whole life (his name is Tom Quayle, and he is now a YouTube-star in the growing internet-guitarists community. He also became one of my best friends in Leeds) I felt intimidated by jazz. In fact, the whole part of my first year at College, I only practiced through my headphones. I didn’t want anyone to hear what I played before I felt a bit more confident in the jazz language. 

2014

Berlin, 3 AM. I’m saying goodbye to the rest of the band and crew, they will drive back to Norway while I must fly straight to Oslo to start the festival season. The artists’ management has booked me in a hotel room at the airport so that I can get some sleep before my flight, 2 hours to be exact. I’m so incredibly tired, but my mind is all fired up after a tour with my band EGG3. Now I have to shift myself again to another musical world. From small clubs to big festival stages. Do I remember the music? Instead of sleeping, I play the whole set in my head. The alarm goes off, Next stop: Sound check. 

 

My perfect life? Best of both worlds? I get to make and work with my own music and at the same time play the role of a «rock star». Not that I’m the star…I’m just a hired gun, but I still get to play that part. I have a cat; my own apartment and I share a studio with some friends. To quote Roger Waters: «Is this the life we really want? »

 

 

 

Maybe I need to go deeper? In 2015 get commissioned to write a piece of music for the Maijazz festival in Norway. The music was a result of what I guess you could call an existential crisis, followed by long periods of insomnia. Long nights wondering if I made the right choice by focusing on being a guitarist, to focus on a career in the arts. Why am I a guitarist? Is me playing the guitar a contribution to society?  Something had to change. The making of this music almost felt like a Rite of passage. I had full control over the music and the artistic output, and I tried my best to be honest in the music. I was entering something new and leaving something behind. 

Berlin/Stavanger 2017

2 concerts in Berlin and one in Stavanger.  First gig in Berlin was horrible. My guitar and the rest of the gear got lost on the plane, so I had to borrow everything. This band was playing completely improvised music, so I felt a bit lost without my own stuff. I was tired, uninspired, and insecure. The next gig was great, not a jazz club, but a lovely underground club. But I still remember not being comfortable in the situation. I was always wondering if what I did was any good, and I didn’t feel the connection to the music I was expecting. I felt like I used my chops, and that I had very few of them in the bag in the first place. The Stavanger gig was not great for me either. I had the same feeling all the time: What am I doing? What is this? My guitar does not fit into this at all. And this is being recorded.

 

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. 

 

Something has to change. 

Voksenåsen Hotell. November 2018. 

I had an early flight. Way too early. Managed to get up to the hotel, checked in. Time to get some sleep. Impossible. My head is spinning. I haven’t felt like this in years. I’m nervous. This is the first seminar of The Norwegian Artistic Research School Seminar, and I have to present my project. Now this is well out of my comfort zone. I have no idea what to expect. It has been a long time since I had to do anything in front of anyone without a guitar. No stage lights. No familiar and comforting smell of a smoke machine. Where do I put my hands? Where on earth do people put their hands when they’re not wearing a guitar? I did bring some element of the stage with me though, a pair of high heeled leather boots. I’ve done loads of concerts in these boots. The sound of the clacking of the heal against the linoleum floor in the conference room gives me a feeling of control. Or maybe just a memory of it, whatever it is, I’ll take it. So now I’m going to tell a bunch of strangers, a bunch of talented, smart and accomplished strangers, who I am, what I’ve done so far, why I’m granted 3 years of working with something to hopefully make me a more interesting guitarist (or whatever I am at the moment). They might hate my idea. They might say that it won’t work. They are probably right. I’m not even sure if it will work. All I know is that I must evolve. I’m tired of the way I play. I need more material to work with. I need to know more. I need knowledge. I need time. I need more time to go deep. I need to go deeper. Why do I put myself in this situation? After all, I used to be a shy kid. I used to get so nervous before a concert that I could hardly feel my feet touching the ground. I almost think I have a split personality, where one half just wants to sit at home in my own living room, watching movies, close the curtains, have a glass of wine…and never really having to leave the house. The other half needs to be seen, to be acknowledged or accepted. To always find new grounds, accomplish something new. To be tormented. I know it’s not an unique thing to fell inadequate as a musician, in many ways, I guess that is one of the things that gives you the drive. A love/hate relationship to what you do. It’s like being in a complicated relationship with yourself. You and your mind. You and your instrument, You and your body. You and your sound. You and your insecurities. Where do people put their hands when they’re not wearing a guitar?

2021

I’m in my studio in Stavanger. Surrounded by guitar amps, guitars, cables, pedals, and a small PA. My left hand is bending the low E-string as far as I can manage while my right hand is wearing a movement sensor, which controls a video recording of myself doing the same movement projected on the wall beside me. By moving my hand, I control the granulated video back and forth. On my head, there is another movement sensor which controls two LED lights. When I shake my head, I trigger a strobe effect that makes the room flicker, almost making it look like there is a glitch in the real world, just like the glitch in the video. I’m trying to coordinate my hands and head to control the sensors at the same time as I’m playing a guitar part. This is hard. 

25.05.23 21:10, Tou Scene, Stavanger.

Mechanical Forest 3. I’ve just struck the last chord. That’s it. I’m staring at the window screen as it opens, letting the light from a grey early summer evening into the room. I can hear the reverb is still hanging in the PA. I loosen the grip on the pick I hold in my right hand. It falls to the stage floor. Now it’s quiet. Did they like it? Did they get it? 

 

Now, turn around…

Introduction

As a guitarist, I have always searched for new input and new ways of using my instrument. From the early days trying to sound like David Gilmour with my Hondo[1]guitar, via jazz studies being introduced to both bebop and free jazz, to a life as a professional guitarist which involved playing popular music, improvised music, and composed western art music. I often worked with composers that did not have much experience with working with electric guitarist, nor had much knowledge about the instrument. Being in these situations challenged me to expand what me and my instrument could do. It was out of this work the idea of working with compositional techniques and concepts to expand my palette as an improvising guitarist came. 

 

My research has led me to a concept where I combine my guitar and body with technology, video and scenic elements in a musical world which consists of improvised and composed music. This research led to my presentation of my final artistic results: The Mechanical Forest 3.

My word play on Eclectic and Electric refers to the way I see the Electric Guitar in my artistic practice: To me, the instrument is a perfect tool to use in the sound world I am drawn to, where it can be manipulated, extended, and rebuilt. 


 

During my research project, I have studied compositional techniques from spectral music[2], Computer aided composition⁠[3], Multimedia composition⁠(4), Electro acoustic composition⁠[5] and other composers and artists who work with movement, light design, extended instruments, sensor composition and technology[6]⁠.

 

Very few of these works involved the electric guitar[7], and there was a point in my research where I almost felt like the guitar itself became less important, and that I didn’t find a way to integrate this knowledge as a guitarist. I found myself in a situation where I worked with videos, sensors, scenic concepts, or trying to figure out how to use stage lights to create an artistic vision etc.

 

The turning point was when I realized that all these elements was an extension of my guitar rig and my idea of being a guitarist.

 

In the concept of the Mechanical Forest, I try to create concerts where I as an improvising electric guitarist (and composer) use technological and aesthetic elements inspired by these techniques and concepts, as well as from composed works.

 

I am also inspired by the idea behind Jennifer Walshe’s manifesto «The New Discipline» (2016). In her manifesto, Walshe talks about composers who can be linked to The New Discipline who draw on dance, theatre, film, video, visual art, installation, literature, and stand-up comedy (Walshe, 2016). This way of working appealed to me, as I have always been drawn to the idea of using extra musical elements in my performances, as well as allowing myself as an artist to use elements that have formed me. 

 

My motivation for starting this research project came from a desire to evolve as an improvising guitarist. As a guitarist, I saw an untapped source of knowledge in the world of composed contemporary art music, my aim was to bring this into my practice. During my research period my relationship with my guitar(s) became central to my artistic experimentations. I have created extended guitars which are designed in a way that alters the way I perform on stage. In the process of mastering these instruments, I was confronted with how strong the bodily relationship between me, and my guitar is, a physical relationship to sound making based on gesture, movement, and touch.

 

Through the development of my practice I came to see my relationship with the guitar, my effects and technology, and the sound as transcoporeal anchored in the through and between the bodily aspects of my guitar playing practice. 

 

I use the term transcorporeal as a conceptual framework that allows me to talk about the interconnectedness of the body, and objects and its surrounding environment. It points to the fact that the human body is not a discrete entity but rather a site of continuous exchange, communication, and transformation (Halstead, Jill. Forthcoming)

The Mechanical Forest

The concept reflects my idea of how we as humans, musicians, improvisers, and creators are connected, as well as how we are connected to the technology, we need to make sound and perform music. The stage is full of cables, running from instruments, speakers, computers and lights, sending and receiving energy between us humans and the technology. My guitar is routed to my effect pedals and amplifiers, which again send out sound waves picked up by a microphone connected to the PA system. The tiny sound waves I create when my fingers touch the metal strings on my guitar have sprout from a seed to a massive tree, all in the matter of nano seconds. Through the sound waves from my guitar, combined with my gestures, I am communicating to my fellow musicians on stage that we are now living and breathing together in this world. 

 

Instruments

At the core of this project is my relationship between me and my Gibson Goldtop guitar. This has been my main guitar for ten years. I use this guitar playing rock, pop, improvised music, composed contemporary art music, and basically every project I have worked with since I got it. 

 I also use several extended guitars which I have created during my research. I will go into further details about each instrument in my written reflection as they enter the research project. I chose to present my work in a linear way, so for now I will just give them a short introduction: 

Metaguitars  

Video projections of myself playing which I play using movement sensors and MAX. 

Broken Guitar

This instrument is recycling technology. It is about working against the “purity” and “perfection”. I have placed contact microphones, a noise synth, a vocal microphone, springs, and a music box on the guitar. The sound is then manipulated on my computer by a member of the ensemble. 

Quartercaster

My quarter tone guitar was created as a result of working with spectral techniques. By adding extra frets to a Fender Telecaster, I got the opportunity to experiment with microtonality and scales created by spectral analysis. 

Guitar Roots

I use seven guitars placed on the floor, and tune them each in an open tuning based on different synthetic scales. I use a handheld guitar pickup (a Humbucker from a Gibson ES 335) which allows me to move around the Guitar Roots and play them, using the handheld pickup to scan the guitars for sound. I play these guitar as if they are one. They are all connected through the scale as well as being placed on the floor

 

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