The Prepared Electric Guitar

This is a continued response to Carl asking about trying to make music with a random set of intervals.

As with all things guitar 12 TET is mixed in with your tuning of the guitar - and its hybrid really. Is this pure microtonal - I think so... but I won't fight you if you say its not.

Well, this is hardly a tune - its really just an experiment I did back in 82 to so.

http://micro.soonlabel.com/prepared-guitar/prepared-electric-guitar.mp3

Being inspired by the John Cage prepared piano (which I had done to the piano I had at home at one point) I put pieces of aluminum foil as little balls on the strings. Observing that the heavier the piece was the greater the modulation I eventually graduated to lead attachments - fishing weights worked really well for this application.

In my subsequent reading I found out that this had the effect of making the string vibrate in a non-harmonic fashion and generated a ring modulation effect acoustically.

However, since it took time to prepare the guitar and it was... challenging to make musical music (to my ears then) with it I simply taped the sound and went on to the next idea. Perhaps someone will use these sounds as samples - perhaps not.

Excuse the quality... I was just married, two kids, pretty poor, and my tape equipment was pathetic. I tried to clean this up.

The sounds are so unusual and yet so charming. You've done a good job
cleaning up the audio Chris. In fact, the quality of the tape adds to
the microtonality of the improvisation. There is almost a bell-like
quality in the tone of the prepared guitar.

Oz.

✩ ✩ ✩
www.ozanyarman.com

On Sep 15, 2009, at 6:58 AM, vaisvil wrote:

> This is a continued response to Carl asking about trying to make
> music with a random set of intervals.
>
> As with all things guitar 12 TET is mixed in with your tuning of the
> guitar - and its hybrid really. Is this pure microtonal - I think
> so... but I won't fight you if you say its not.
>
> Well, this is hardly a tune - its really just an experiment I did
> back in 82 to so.
>
> http://micro.soonlabel.com/prepared-guitar/prepared-electric-
> guitar.mp3
>
> Being inspired by the John Cage prepared piano (which I had done to
> the piano I had at home at one point) I put pieces of aluminum foil
> as little balls on the strings. Observing that the heavier the piece
> was the greater the modulation I eventually graduated to lead
> attachments - fishing weights worked really well for this application.
>
> In my subsequent reading I found out that this had the effect of
> making the string vibrate in a non-harmonic fashion and generated a
> ring modulation effect acoustically.
>
> However, since it took time to prepare the guitar and it was...
> challenging to make musical music (to my ears then) with it I simply
> taped the sound and went on to the next idea. Perhaps someone will
> use these sounds as samples - perhaps not.
>
> Excuse the quality... I was just married, two kids, pretty poor, and
> my tape equipment was pathetic. I tried to clean this up.
>
>
>
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Hi Chris,

first of all, it's nice to know that these effects can also be done acoustically without any "abstract processing" of the sound. I always thought this can only be done with something like frequency shifters or ring modulators. I think this raises a similar point as the fact that you can get a similar effect like speeding up a recording of your voice just by breathing helium (in fact, not quite the same because helium doesn't change the pitch, only the timbre).

Secondly, you've reminded me of a recording which I made back in 2001. But there I WAS really using a hardware ring modulator (which is currently not working any longer) combined with some almost infinitely repeating echoes. Maybe you'll like it. Here's the link:
www.sendspace.com/file/42m9kc

Petr

That is a cool piece Petr!!!

I have done similar but not nearly as abstract pieces with the sound on
sound ability of an echoplex tape delay - long time ago though. I don't
know about you - I wish I owned a version of Robert Fripp's Flippertronics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frippertronics

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Petr Parízek <p.parizek@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> first of all, it's nice to know that these effects can also be done
> acoustically without any "abstract processing" of the sound. I always
> thought this can only be done with something like frequency shifters or ring
> modulators. I think this raises a similar point as the fact that you can get
> a similar effect like speeding up a recording of your voice just by
> breathing helium (in fact, not quite the same because helium doesn't change
> the pitch, only the timbre).
>
> Secondly, you've reminded me of a recording which I made back in 2001. But
> there I WAS really using a hardware ring modulator (which is currently not
> working any longer) combined with some almost infinitely repeating echoes.
> Maybe you'll like it. Here's the link:
> www.sendspace.com/file/42m9kc
> Petr
>
>
>
>