1: Introduction
7: Interlude
9: Epilogue
10: References
The Electric Guitar and the wall of sound.
«… for me, most of my music actually focuses on psychoacoustics as a fundamental quality of the sound experience. It’s very easy to connect these psychoacoustic ideas to the scientific side of quantum theory and through contemporary physics such as string theory; it then becomes a philosophical question about the very nature of sound and music. Essentially, disrupting or modifying the state of matter through vibrations. Reminding the mind of the possibilities of this fundamental aspect that is vibrations, of which all matter is composed. «(Stephen O’Malley, interview 2020)
The guitarist, composer, and visual artist Steven O’Malley, from the band Sun O))), is known for creating what can be described as drone doom music. The band Sun O))) is named after the American amplifier company Sunn. The choice of name gives an indication of how the band sounds live: they are loud. The music is very slow, the sound of the amplifiers is loud and deep, encouraging the audience into a trance like experience. O’Malley has worked and with the Romanian composer Lancu Dumitrescu, who describes himself as a spectral composer. O’malley’s recording of Galaxy (III) (Dumitrescu 1993) for electric guitar & computer sounds is a dark and beautiful example of the sounds the instrument can produce.
23.04.23 10:30 Tou Lyd (rehearsal studio).
I’m standing in front of my two guitar amplifiers and one bass amplifier, igniting both my overdrive pedal, an octave pedal and one of my delays, while pressing down the second fret on the sixth string of my Goldtop with my left index finger. I hit the sixth with my pick as I push the volume pedal all the way up. The sound fills the room, and I wait for the guitar to begin feeding back. The Goldtop starts to vibrate. I move up to the third fret before I hit the open low E string. I’m inside the sound.
I started using a bass amplifier together with my guitar amplifiers (stereo setup) when I formed my trio EGG3. The was no bass player in this band, but I still wanted that deep low end in the band sound. I decided to bring this amplifier set-up into the Mechanical Forest 3 concert. This way, I could access this powerful sound when needed.
In his Artistic Research Project, “The shape of concerts to come”, Westerhus talks about the guitar effects having an inherent playability, and the conflict a guitarist can have with him or herself by wondering if the only reason you manage your music is because you have bought a lot of great effect pedals (Westerhus 2021).
Westerhus plays these effects (and other electronics), just like he plays his guitar. It is a part of his instrument, just like they are a part of mine. Choosing the right effects to put in your pedal chain, figuring out how to use them in a way that extends your guitar, knowing when to use them (and when not to use them), are a big part of my practice as a guitarist. I can play a concert with just my Goldtop and my Fender Princeton, or I can use the whole arsenal of amplifiers, effect pedals, sensors, and my computer. I will argue that you will still recognize my playing. At least I do. I feel the same, I still close my eyes when I play. The electric guitar is E(c)lect(r)ic.
Guitarists in the expanded field
As a guitarist, I place myself in the tradition of what I call the expanded field. This field is not dictated by genre or style, but by the search for new sounds and sound worlds. The English guitarist Robert Fripp, from the progressive rock band King Crimson, continues to explore the instrument through projects such as Guitar Craft, where he works with finding a way to develop a relationship to the guitar, music and oneself. In addition to the above mentioned Stian Westerhus and Stephen O’malley, I find the works of Norwegian guitarist Bernt Isak Wærstad interesting, especially the project Vingeklang (an elctro-acoustic free-improv duo consisting of him and Amun Ulvestad). Norwegian guitarists Ivar Grydeland’s Artistic Research project Goodbye Intuition (2017-2020 together with Andrea Neumann, Morten Qvenild, and Sidsel Endresen. Grydeland was project leader) where he (and others) plays with an improvising software named Kim-Auto[1], produced interesting artistic results like the performance at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. 6th February 2020 at the Norheim Festival (KimAuto - Andrea Neumann - Ivar Grydeland - Morten Qvenild.). This concert can be watched here.
In Danish guitarist Mark Solborg’s works “Tungemål III and “Tungemål I + II”, he poses the question how do you talk - alone and with others - when you are the only one that is being translated through a loudspeaker ? ..is it possible to play both acoustically and electrified - simultaneously? (Solborg 2020). Tungemål is a study concerning what he describes as the electrified guitar as a voice in contemporary chamber-musical context. When I bought these albums, I also ordered two books that compliments the musical work. In Tungemål I, Solborg writes:
…a sonic and musical language. An investigation of the instrumental and spatial topography of the guitar. The electrified guitar – in an acoustic landscape
I play the guitar.
I compose music for the guitar.
Mostly connected to an amplifier and a speaker.
In a musical room with acoustic instruments.
Piano, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, drums…
Like the voice, the guitar would drown without amplification.
From being the softest and, arguably, most intimate, instrument in the room it is, all of a sudden, given means to become loud.
And distorted
And processed
And enlarged
And geographically displaced
It is now a new instrument (?)
The source of the sound is converted to electrical current and interpreted through amplifier and loudspeaker.
What happens to the original instrument?
Strings
Fingers
Fretboard
Sound box
Dynamics & timbre… …are they lost?
…definitely changed.
If you lose the softest part of your dynamic register:
How do you sound?
How do you play?
How do you listen?
What happens to the conversation if your voice is – or isn’t – soft enough for you to be able to hear other voices in the room?
How do you engage idiomatically in the conversation?
Is there a tongue – et tungemål – for both instruments?
Can I have both worlds? Play two layers of guitar simultaneously. Live.
…and how do I record and communicate what I discover? (Solborg 2020)
I resonate with Solborgs thoughts and reflections in these books. He talks about how the instrument changes into a new instrument when it is amplified and processed. How do you as an electric guitarist fit in with acoustic instruments? Is the electric guitar ever an acoustic instrument? I find this search and reflection over what the electric guitar is, and can be, to be a big part in why I find the instrument so fascinating and generous.
An electric guitarist never complains about the acoustics of a room. She turns on the reverb pedal.
The electric guitar as an orchestral instrument
The electric guitarist is seldom working in groups larger than 2 or 3, but the American composer and guitarist, Rhys Chatam’s A Crimson Grail, uses up to 200 guitarists (as well as 16 electric basses and percussion.) In 2011, Norwegian composer Nils Henrik Asheim and Norwegian guitarist Alf Terje Hana had a collaborative work called Tou Tower, where they gathered 51 electric guitarist (including me), and placed them on a scaffolding next to a dilapidated tower.
I also want to mention works which feature the electric guitar in a symphony orchestra, such as Bjørn Charles Dreyer’s Time and Mass (2021) and Bryce Dessner’s “Raphael” for two electric guitars and Ensemble (2008).
Following the trail of composed music for electric guitar, French Spectral composer Tristan Murail’s “Vampyr!”, is an interesting take on the electric guitar and the culture it holds.
In the article Rock Spectrale: The cultural identity of the electric guitar in Tristan Murail’s “vampyr!”(Jameson 2015), the author refers to a BBC interview where Murail’s interest in rock seemed to be linked to his fascination with timbre:
I don't know much about it [rock music] and I'm afraid I don't like it very much, but I'm interested by a few aspects of it. Sometimes the sound itself is very interesting . . . but of course the language of it is so simple.[2]
The performance notes to Vampyr! is very detailed when it comes to what sound quality he wants to come from the electric guitar:
The desired sound is rather like that of the solo guitar as played by Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton etc. It is more a question of achieving the saturation effect of a valve amplifier than a real fuzz which is too close to mere noise. The pitches should therefore be quite clearly discernible. This means holding back on saturation in order to avoid parasite noises and unwelcome resonances. Nonetheless the compression effect should be retained thus enabling the notes to be held sufficiently long.[3]
I have not performed this piece myself, but I have heard the version by Wiek Hijman (2019), and watched several performances of it online (such as Flavio Virzi’s performance from 2011).
I have to admit that I’m a bit conflicted when it comes to this piece. All though I think the piece has a lot of interesting takes on how the electric guitar sounds, and what qualities it holds in timbre, I find the musical part of it to be less interesting. I find this version of the electric guitar to be a bit outed. If I was to perform this piece myself, I would not be able not to let my personal idiomatic sound influence colour the music. I would like it to sound improvised, which is probably the wrong take on interpreting this piece. This is one of the reasons why I never attended to play it.
A different compositional approach to the electric guitar is Steve Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint” for electric guitar and tape, recorded by Pat Metheny in 1987. This piece does not explore much of the timbre of the electric guitar, and the whole piece is recorded with a clean sound.
All these different approaches to the electric guitar are important contributions to the field. I also believe that by searching for new ground, new sounds and new impulses, is the way forward to keep the electric guitar relevant. I believe it is important to stay playful, curious mixed with a healthy portion of self-irony. To illustrate this point, I would like to let Ace Frehley from KISS have the last word:
«I can't even read notes. But I can teach someone how to make a guitar smoke». Ace Frehley
The above picture is of the pedalboard(s) I used in Mechanical Forest 3. The picture is out of focus, but I don’t think it was intentional. That red one (Keeley Red Dirt) on the right broke during the first day of preproduction. I’ve had it on my board for 9 years. It’s my main overdrive-pedal. Luckily, I managed to borrow a similar one for the concert. Overdrive pedals are strange. I find most of them to be completely wrong for my use. When I play a “wrong” one, they sound “cheesy” or “tacky”, it’s hard to explain. There is a sonic history, and a sonic identity in an overdrive pedal. They can make me sound like I have a different musical taste than I have. The Keeley Red Dirt is connected to my musical taste. I tried several other overdrive pedals the day the red one broke. I got really stressed and depressed, they really didn’t work in the solo piece. I posted a little cry for help on Facebook, and the guitar community came to the rescue. The guy (thanks Lage) who had one even came to the venue with the pedal…on a bike. He understood the importance of an overdrive pedal. I’ve been using this pedal with my Goldtop-guitar for so long that I know how they react to each other. This pedal makes the neck of the guitar vibrate in a certain way when I play it, It might sound strange, but I do recognise this vibration. When I strike a F# Power chord using this pedal and the Goldtop, I feel powerful and at home.
Artistic Web.
In the article, “The Web of Artistic Practise” (Coessens, 2014), Kathleen Coessens talks about the complex web of influences, experiences, tacit knowledge, and explicit knowledge behind an artistic practise. . I aim to create music and art where I can use all that I am. In improvisation, I can access this web to shape new connections and new music.
Per Zanussi refers to John Butcher, and his article "Freedom and Sound - This time it’s personal" : "..he gives the simple definition of the expression” voice” as ”a useful shorthand term for an individual’s sound and ways of playing” (Butcher 2011). The voice is an expression of the musician’s previous musical and personal experiences and taste, of her listening and expression of what she hears, of her ways of reacting to the overall sound, of her web of artistic practice. (Zanussi, 2017)
My artistic web forms my improvisations. As an improvising guitarist, I use my artistic web to form my voice.
Popular culture and early influences that shaped me.
In this text, I will talk about Heavy Metal, Alice Cooper, Rammstein, and David Lynch. These are all elements that has shaped my aesthetic, and that I can trace in my music (while preparing for Mechanical Forest 3, I spent hours watching live performances by especially Alice Cooper and Rammstein).
I learned to play the electric guitar by listening to records and then trying to copy what I heard. I had no guitar teacher except from an older brother who sometimes showed me tricks as he already was quite skilled on the instrument. This way of entering the world of the electric guitar is not uncommon, and most of the guitarists I was listening to were autodidact. At the time, I was mostly listening to music that was defined as Heavy Metal, a genre that was not known as being particularly sophisticated by outsiders. The music was learned outside of institutions, there was no Bachelor in Heavy Metal.
In the book “Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music”(Walsher, 1993) by Robert Walser, he talks about how the genre was looked down at by rock critics and academics.
Heavy metal: pimply, prole, putrid, unchic, unsophisticated, anti-intellectual (but impossibly pretentious), dismal, abysmal, terrible, horrible, and stupid music, barely music at all… music made by slack-jawed, alpaca-haired, bulbous-inseamed imbeciles in jackboots and leather and chrome for slack-jawed, alpaca-haired, downy-mustachioed imbeciles in cheap, too-large T-shirts with pictures of comic-book Armageddon ironed on the front. … Heavy metal, mon amour, where do I start?—Robert Duncan (Duncan 1984)
It was rarely taken seriously, either as music or as cultural activity of any complexity or importance (Walser 1993). I was also drawn to horror movies, which often shared the aesthetics of many of the bands and artists I was listening to. Artists like Alice Cooper, King Diamond, Ozzy Osbourne, and Black Sabbath created music that would actually scare me as a ten-year-old. The Music was guitar driven and I was always drawn to the guitar solos, often influenced by classical music.
’80s heavy metal compositions are stereotyped as having simple vocal melodies, screaming guitar solos, and heavy power chord harmonies. Yet despite these preconceptions, evidence of High Art musical influences can be seen throughout the genre. (Elflein 2016)
Guitarists like Ritchie Blackmore, Uli John Roth and especially Yngwie Malmsteen all have elements of classical music in their playing.
“My classical influence is 100 per cent from Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Nicolai Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and so on.” (Yngwie Malmsteen, Young Guitar Magazine, 2021)
Having grown up in a family where both my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts had studied classical music, I found the classical elements in the guitar solos by Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Jason Becker, and Marty Friedman interesting and appealing. I was also drawn to the virtuosity these guitarists showed. I started listening to instrumental Heavy Metal Guitar music before I started playing myself. Albums like Perpetual Burn (Jason Becker 1988), Dragon’s Kiss (Marty Friedman 1988), Mind’s Eye (Vinnie Moore 1986) and Passion and Warfare (Steve Vai 1990) are albums I still hold high to this day, and frequently listen to.
Reading about Steve Vai, I learned about him having played with the American composer (and guitarist) Frank Zappa, which led me to his music, which again led me to composer and saxophonist John Zorn and the eclectic band Mr Bungle, which became a huge influence on my music making later in life.
Even though I have never played in a Heavy Metal Band myself, I have always been drawn to the aesthetics, both musical and visual. I bought my first Alice Cooper album when I was 9, and I was immediately drawn to his way of combining music and theatre on stage.
Alice Cooper was one of the biggest rock bands in the world in the 1970s. The albums Love it to death (1971), Killer (1971), School’s Out (1972), and Billion Dollar Babies (1973), all sold over a million copies each (Bestsellingalbums.org). Lead singer Vince Furnier (who later changed his name to Alice Cooper) was a fierce front man who was known for his theatrical elements in the concert performances. This included stage blood, hangings, electric chair and a guillotine. The original Alice Cooper band released 7 albums, before Vince Furnier embarked on a solo career (he is still recording/touring in 2023) under the Alice Cooper name with the album Welcome to my nightmare (1975).
When I was a kid, I saw pictures of Alice Cooper in a strait jacket, guillotine, hanging from the gallows,sitting in an electric chair, or fighting creatures from well-known horror movies such as Freddie Krueger (Nightmare on Elmstreet), Michael Myers (Halloween) or Jason (Friday the 13th). Cooper would always state that the music always comes first, but the theatrics are the icing of the cake. As he has said in numerous interviews: «If you’re going to say ‘Welcome to my nightmare’, don’t just say it..give them the nightmare «.
By saying this, he refers to his debut solo album, Welcome to my Nightmare (1975). This was a concept album where the protagonist, a young boy called Steven, was experiencing a nightmare. In the tour supporting the album, Cooper played the character Steven as he went through his nightmare.
In December of 2020, I got the opportunity to have a conversation with one member of the original Alice Cooper group, Michael Bruce. He is credited for having written classical Alice Cooper songs like I’m eighteen, School’s Out, Elected!, Billion Dollar Babies, No More mr Nice Guy, and Killer, to name a few. I think it is fair to say that his song writing has been the soundtrack of my life. I discovered Alice Cooper when I was 9, and I still listen to this music regularly (please forgive me for being a bit of a "fanboy" in this conversation).
In the conversation (which you can watch unedited just above this text), he gives his perspective on why they started including theatre elements in their live shows: “we got a new drummer(…), that’s when we started really going more theatrics. Because the musical part wasn’t as intense as it had been. And so we were kinda kicking it up a notch…we’ll distract them with the theatrics while we learn to master our instruments and get our music together” (personal conversation with Michael Bruce 2020). He also talks about when Alice Cooper shared a house and played concerts with Pink Floyd (in the Syd Barret era), and that they tried to copy what they did with their expensive echo machines. They would simulate echo, volume swells and fades (or as we refer to as extended techniques in the world of art music). All in all, I wanted to include the whole conversation for everyone to see, as I find it a being fascinating conversation with an innovator of rock music.
Another band I have followed for just over 20 years is the German Industrial Metal band Rammstein. This band is known for extreme use of pyrotechnics on stage, combined with a very theatrical singer and front man (Till Lindeman), as well as well produced and thought-provoking music videos (Deutschland is a good example of this). In 2023, Rammstein perform in stadiums with a huge production. In interviews, Lindeman tells the story of being a frontman who was a bit shy and wanted to have something to do during instrumental parts of the live shows. He ended up getting a pyrotechnics license, and began experimenting with the use of fire on stage.
A third early influence is the American filmmaker, artist and musician, David Lynch. My first encounter with his work was watching The Elephant Man as a nine-year-old, but the work that would influence me most, was the TV series Twin Peaks. This show aired in Norway during the fall of 1990. At the time, we only had one TV channel, NRK, and the show was aired during prime time on Friday evenings. This meant that almost everyone in Norway watched it. Twin Peaks replaced shows like Derrick (German detective show), Bergerac (English detective show) and Falcon Crest (American soap opera), so the Norwegian public was probably expecting something similar. The show starts out like a crime show. A young girl is found dead in a small town in Washington State. The audience is then taken on a journey with dreams, backwards talking, coffee, cherry pie, horror, humour, and surrealism.
An interesting side note is that Till Lindeman’s (Rammstein) first record was Alice Coopers «Welcome to my Nightmare» (1975), and David Lynch used two songs (Rammstein and Heirate Mich) from Rammstein’s debut album (Herzeleid, 1996) in his movie «Lost Highway» (1997). When writing music for my trio, EGG3, I have used these three as inspiration, I even used samples from Twin Peaks in our debut album[1] (Butcher Red, 2009). This is an instrumental trio consisting of guitar, drums and baritone saxophone -in many ways, quite far from the gigantic sounding machinery that is Rammstein (2 guitars, synth, drums, bass and vocals), and on stage, EGG3 is yet to use any sorts of pyrotechnics (apart from the odd guitar amplifier blowing up on stage every now and then, producing a bit of smoke) or putting either of us in the electric chair like Cooper does. However, the music was an attempt to see how I could combine the aesthetics from these three influences with the sound produced by musicians coming from a jazz and improvised music background. Adding to the mix, I was also heavily influenced by the eclectic band Mr Bungle, a band who’s debut album was produced by John Zorn. I took my fascination for David Lynch’s world even further when I assembled a group of musicians to perform the music of Twin Peaks[2] (The Norwegians). This was also my first attempt of trying out scenic elements, in a concert, using actors to portray characters from the series (Log Lady, Bob and the Jumping Man). The band was also in character during the concerts, as if we came from another reality (the Black lodge, being the shadow universe in Twin Peaks).
Multimedia composition and multi-discipline composing.
I also find visual similarities between the German Multimedia composer Alexander Schubert and live performances of Rammstein. In Schubert’s piece Codec Error (2017), he uses strobe lights and highly synchronized light patterns to visualize the performer on stage in a videoclip-like way (Codec Error, Program Notes). The performers follow a click track and the lights are triggered to the same click. This is a similar approach Rammstein use in their live shows, the band have click tracks in their monitors, and lights and pyro are triggered by the same click (or being triggered by pyro technicians and light technicians listening to the same click track). Musically, Codec Error has some similarities to the industrial metal sound of Rammstein such as deep and dark drones and rhythmic patterns, such as the segment starting approximately 5 minutes into the piece and here (strobes) . In the live footage from Madison Square Garden in New York (2010), Rammstein uses both trigged stage lights, pyrotechnics and theatre (setting fire to an intrusive fan, using a gasoline pump which is brought on stage) in the song Benzin (Rosenrot, 2005), a sequence one could argue would fit into the world of multi-disciplinary composing and performing.1
Popular music and The New Discipline.
In the piece Acceptance (A. Schubert, 2018), the composer wanted the performer of a solo piano piece to stay in nature for five days, without speaking to anybody, and construct 6 wooden sculptures (A. Schubert, Score notes Acceptance, 2018). When Alice Cooper recorded the song Ballad of Dwight Fry (Alice Cooper, Love it to Death, 1971), the producer, Bob Erzin, made Alice perform the song lying on the floor surrounded by a cage made up of metal chairs, to put him in a state of panic and claustrophobia while singing the phrase «I wanna get out of here» (Thompson. D. 2012). The same song is performed live while wearing a strait jacket, which I imagine can be helpful for him to portray the desperation the song needs both musically and visually.
If we are to look at The New Discipline as a way of working, there are similarities between these two examples when it comes to the process before the audience is presented with a musical piece. In Coopers case, the goal was to make him sound authentic in the performance, but I also think there is an interesting aspect when it comes to the memory of the performer.
The way I see the idea about The New Discipline, is that it gives me the opportunity to bring artistic elements from different disciplines and styles. This is why I find it natural to study the acts of Alice Cooper and Rammstein. My aesthetic is shaped by this music, and my instrument is a part of the rock/heavy metal culture. I will argue that studying live performances by Alice Cooper and Till Lindemann, has been a crucial part of my preparation for my performance in Mechanical Forest 3.0. It helped me to push myself going further in a live performance as a guitarist.
