Musical Experimentation Thoughts

As many of you are aware, I love experimental music. The whole percussive fingerstyle genre is essentially about pioneering what can be done with a guitar and coupling these efforts with marketable material, so it should be of no consequence that I often find myself thinking about how to do something new and innovative. While many of these ideas do not materialize themselves in the form of musical compositions, they are, at the very least, musings that are engaging and thought-provoking. The rest of this post will skim the surface of some of the endeavors which I have delved into and some of the ideas that I will be experimenting with. It is very likely that I will go into more detail with these techniques and ideas in a later post.

Prepared Instruments
Some of the more abstract experiments involve prepared instruments. To my knowledge, this is only done on stringed instruments - primarily pianos and guitars. Preparing an instrument involves adding or subtracting from the instrument something that ends up altering the sonic qualities of a note. In the case of pianos and guitars, there are very definite pitches which can be played as individual notes or together in chords. Common preparations involve wedging nuts or bolts between strings, paper-clipping strings together, damping the strings with something, etc. The end result may be anything from a slight alteration in pitch to a completely new, unique sound. In this way, preparations are done before playing the instrument and are done in a very precise, reproducible manner.

Sometime last spring I had the pleasure of seeing one of the finest guitar trios in the world, Guitar Republic. After seeing some of their work, which includes various preparation techniques, I was inspired to mess around with some prepared guitar. I was working mainly with paper clips, twist ties, and paper, but the possibilities are literally endless. I have yet to write anything for prepared guitar, but it is on my list of things to do.

Even before I had heard any prepared guitar, I was exposed to prepared piano by one of my roommates. John Cage pioneered prepared piano and, after listening to more of his work and looking at some of his music scores, I became interested in the art of preparing a piano. This was able to flesh itself out this past fall when I found a free piano on craigslist and brought it to school. Throughout the rest of the semester, during the composition lessons I had with Dr. Dwight Thomas, I prepared the piano. This spring I will be writing for prepared piano, alongside many other composition students. Here's a short clip of some of its sounds (understand that I don't play piano and this is merely for demonstration purposes):

Also, note that the piano has not been damaged in any way (I know that would freak some people out). I'll have a full post on the piano sometime soon...


Abstract Playing Techniques
By this, I mean techniques not seen traditionally. For instance, Henry Cowell's Banshee , where one pianist is playing inside of the piano, or Trace Bundy's percussive fingerstyle guitar compositions played with capos that are moved throughout the piece. These are the sort of things that inspire me. When I see someone do something like that, it floods my mind with all sorts of crazy ideas. This is actually what this post is about... So here are some innovative ideas pertaining to guitar:

• Body Percussion: Especially with an acoustic guitar that is internally mic'd - this adds tons of possibilities to your compositions. Keep in mind that different parts of the body will give you different sounds. You can utilize the entire body, front and back to get a variety of different "drum" tones (I would advise against beating on the neck of the guitar, however, as that could really end up sucking). You can also vary the part of your hand that you're using. Try using your palm, the side of your thumb, your finger, rolling your knuckles, and even using your nails (if they're grown out).

• String Percussion: The most common string percussion is made by slapping the strings against the fretboard after playing a chord. By simply slapping your palm down over the soundhole, you'll get a nice string slapping sound that will add texture to your music. This is also extremely easy to do and a good place to start. You can also get a similar sound by using individual fingers on your picking hand to make quick slaps on the fretboard across all of the strings. When this is done at a natural harmonic, you'll get what's known as a tapped harmonic. Try this out along with using 2 or 3 fingers individually on your picking hand in a rolling motion.

• Playing Overtones: Whenever you do a hammer-on, you're actually producing more than one note. Obviously the note that you are fretting is primarily what you hear, but you are in between two fret wires, so you will get an overtone of the section of string above your finger as well. You will notice this more the further down the neck you travel. Beyond the 12th fret, if you are not muting the top half of the strings, you've probably heard this and it's probably been rather distressing if you are a tone seeker. Rather than freak out over this, experiment to use this to your advantage. By muting the strings above where you are fretting (a heavier palm mute will work), your hammer-ons will sound the otherwise obnoxious "overtone" section of the string. You can also fret normally and strum on the opposite side of the stings to get those tones.
• Note: the action on your neck may cause a considerable amount of fret-buzz when you try this. Just get a new guitar (not that yours is insufficient, but I'm just giving a reasonable excuse to expand your collection).

• Tune to the Headstock: I played a show once with a brilliant musician, Trevor Gordon Hall. Not that other people haven't done this, but one thing that I took note of was how well he incorporated the section of string at the headstock of the guitar. A month or so later and I found myself in my room, asking myself how I could do that better. I started experimenting and, as anyone who has done such a thing can attest to, the mix of tones up there sound horrid. It doesn't have to be, though. Just as you can change the tuning of the "playable" lengths of string to meet your needs, you can also tune the section on the headstock. You'll end up with some weird things going on with the normal section of strings, but that just gives you another challenge.

These are things that inspire me. I'd encourage everyone to play around with these and experiment. Music is much more than playing cover songs; it's an art that ought to celebrate creativity and innovation.

-Alex