| Sunrise from the Bottom of the Sea |
| (homage to Jimi Hendrix) |
| for electric guitar and pre-recorded accompaniment |
| Year: 2005 |
| Duration: 15' |
First Performance: 29
April 2005 Taplin Auditorium- Princeton, NJ |
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* The score for this piece is a 3.5MB file. As a consequence, it may take some time to download and open.
Program Notes: Sunrise From the Bottom of the Sea; for live, improvised electric guitar and “hard media” accompaniment, is a response to the song Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix. Specifically, I am responding to elements of technology and improvisation- two things that Hendrix (as well as many of his contemporaries and succeeding generations of musicians) have relied upon as the basis for their creative process. I grew up playing rock and roll on an electric guitar, but have played classical guitar fairly exclusively for the past ten years. Until I began work on this project, I had not seriously touched an electric guitar since 1994! In a similar vein, all the music I have written since around that same time has been derived from writing notes on paper. I am attempting in Sunrise to get away from the process of dealing with music in a codified form (musical notation) and create music in a more tactile, intuitive, and “real time” sort of way through the use of improvised performance and recording technology. The accompaniment part of Sunrise was performed and recorded solely in my home studio, using only instruments that I had at my immediate disposal. This included a set of 16, tuned crystal glasses; soprano and alto recorders; glockenspiel; viola; Appalachian mountain dulcimer; electric guitar; electric bass; steel string and nylon string guitars; African djembe and udu drums; and a 16 inch frame drum. A “sample” taken from the last note of Are You Experienced and an occasional passage for reversed, pitch-shifted glockenspiel are the only “truly” electronically manipulated aspects of the accompaniment. When creating the piece, I would record improvised phrases on different instruments. One phrase would suggest another, and from these I would just keep improvising, recording, and adding things. In short, I would let the process of improvising take me where it would. The solo electric guitar part is slightly different in that specific soloistic gestures are suggested to me by the accompaniment, and I have come up with a framework for what I think should be happening in the solo part at any given point during the piece. Within this framework, however, is a fair amount of room for further improvisation on the part of the soloist. In retrospect, the piece is somewhat similar to a concerto in form. The soloist is at times pitted in relief against the accompaniment, and at other times plays within the overall musical texture as a member of the ensemble. Towards the end of the piece there is a brief, freely improvised “cadenza” based on Hendrix's solo from Are You Experienced, followed by a “kind of” finale. |
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