Stravinsky's wind octet (for flute, clarinet, bassoons, trumpets, and trombones)
is an opportunity for the octet to explore the wide range of timbres of the
electric guitar. Varied pickup selections and some touches of overdrive mimic
the sounds of the original instruments, transforming the octet while respecting
Stravinsky's deliberated timbral combinations. Written in 1923, this piece
was one of Stravinsky's early re-examinations of classical and baroque music.
While it is clear that he took inspiration from older traditions of Western
music, his sense of play and humor offer a lightness to this challenging
piece.
CORNELIUS BOOTS (b.1974)
Va Larga
Composer and bass clarinet innovator Cornelius
Boots offered the Los Angeles Electric 8
this rocking piece from the vaults of his
bass clarinet quartet, Edmund Welles. Though
Boots draws from guitar stylings for his
bass clarinet compositions (he released an
album of Black Sabbath and Sepultura covers
on bass clarinet quartet) his co-arrangement
for the Electric 8 preserves some of the
bass clarinet character by employing slides,
ebows, and overdrive pedals. At the same
time, it gives in to riffy guitar patterns
in odd time signatures that feel more like
swaggers than limps.
PHIL KLINE (b.1953)
96 Tears
Originally for electric guitar octet, this imitation
of 17th century viol consort music (in the
widest sense of "imitation") employs
a slew of ebows and sustainiacs to produce
long tones in unexpected harmonies, slowly
developing and then slowly unravelling over
the course of twelve minutes. The result
of eight sustaining electric guitars is at
times spare and at other times bristling
with beating patterns that emerge as notes
microtonally bend against each other.
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Louange à l'Éternité de
Jésus
Like much of Maessian's music, the Quartet for
the End of Time is an abridged dialogue between
sound and divinity. The Louange à l'Éternité de
Jésus (Praise to Jesus' Eternity)
is the fifth movement from the Quartet and
features a slow moving melody with triadic
accompaniment. Originally written for cello
and piano, this arrangement for the Los Angeles
Electric 8 distributes the piano accompaniment
among the six outer guitars and the cello
melody in the center two. The movement is
reverential and bids the listener to focus
on Jesus' eternal nature.
Messiean's Quartet for the End of Time was completed
in 1940, while the composer was interned in a
German prison camp. Among his fellow detainees
were a clarinetist, a violinist and a cellist.
Performed for fellow prisoners and camp officers
during January of 1941, the Quartet for the End
of Time has grown to be Messiaen's most well
known composition.
ERIK SATIE (1866-1925)
Air du Grand Prieur from Sonneries de la Rose
+ Croix
Unlike many of Satie's humorous and insouciant
musical statements, the Sonneries de la Rose
+ Croix express both his deep spirituality
and romantic inclinations. Amidst the cold
block triads is a single melodic line that
gives its expressive warmth that is arranged
in call-and-response between sets of guitars.
Originally for piano, the adaptation to electric
guitar octet demonstrates both the timbral
similarity between electric guitar and piano
and the expressive melodic power of the electric
guitar.
MANTLE HOOD (1918-2005)
Implosion
Mantle Hood was a renowned ethnomusicologist
who studied most of the great musical traditions
of the world. Before turning his life's work
to pioneering ethnomusicology, Hood studied
composition under Ernst Toch. Implosion is
one of the few pieces that he wrote after
becoming a scholar of Indonesian music, pouring
his deep knowledge of Balinese musical forms
into an innovative composition for percussion
quartet: two xylophones, marimba, and vibraphone.
Brought to the electric guitars, we use palm-mute
techniques to reproduce the intricate hocketed
parts of the xylophones and marimba and tremolo
effects to imitate the vibraphone notes that
seem to hover over the ensemble. As the guitars
shift from xylophones and marimba parts to
vibraphone parts, the diversity of electric
guitar sounds become evident and intriguing.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
Four Preludes & Fugues
1. Prelude No. 8 - BWV
853
2. Fugue No. 8 - BWV 853
3. Prelude No. 14 - BWV
883
4. Fugue No. 21 - BWV 886
Two steps removed. We started with Brazilian
composer Heitor Villa-Lobos' cello orchestra
arrangements of four of Bach's preludes and
fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier. The
electric guitars actually sit in-between
the two versions, the guitars being able
to attack like a piano and sing like a cello.
Extending Villa-Lobos' thickening of parts
through voice doublings and aural spatialization
this arrangement of the arrangement splits
the parts only to fit them back together
like a musical puzzle.
Traditional, arr. Ben Harbert
Ladrang Siyem
In another feat of musical globe-trotting, Ladrang
Siyem is a 1929 adaptation of a Western-influenced
Thai tune Sanrasoen
Phra Barami that we have
now brought back to the West on electric
guitar octet. For those who know Javanese
music, its irregular melodic contours sets
it at odds with more traditional fare. The
dense interlocked fabric of this piece, however,
is squarely rooted in Javanese arrangement
techniques which fit surprisingly well on
electric guitars. This easy translation is
perhaps due to the commonality of sound that
struck metal produces (bronze metalophones
and bronze-alloy guitar strings) or the rich
tradition of guitar playing scattered across
the diverse islands of Indonesia.
WAYNE SIEGEL (b.1953)
Domino Figures
Originally for 10-100 classical guitars, we think
the sound of eight electric guitars makes
up for being two guitars shy. This long minimalist
piece highlights the acoustic artifacts produced
by blending the sounds of many electric guitars,
producing ethereal undertones and overtones.
The effect is greater than the sum of the
parts, revealing overtones that are particular
to the electric guitar.
East L.A. Phase
We've expanded the four classical guitar parts
to our eight electric guitars. Where the original
is an interwoven nylon tapestry, the ostinato
lines on the electric guitars recall fragments
of minimalist rock riffs blended into a dynamic
whole greater than the sum of its parts. As
interlocked parts change, drop out, and announce
themselves, the effect is one of the ground
shifting, revealing new patterns from the old.
We'll never know if Dimitri Shostakovich would
have written for electric guitar, but this
arrangement of his double string quartet
makes you wonder if he would have found voice
for his early works in a metal band—Schostakovich
wrote these two disorienting contemplative
pieces at age eighteen following the Russian
Revolution.
GIOVANNI DOMENICO ROGNONI
TAEGGIO (d.1626)
GIOVANNI GABRIELI (c.1555-1612)
La Porta,
Canzone
Sonata XII a 8
O Jesu mi dulcissime
These three adaptations of choral pieces from
the Italian high Renaissance re-present these
composers’ interest in the Venetian
polychoral experiments: spatially separating
halves opposing halves of a choir to create
a musical dialogue across the performance
venue. In modern renditions of these early
trials of stereo sound, eight electric guitars
substitute for the grandeur of the Basilica
San Marco di Venezia.
FRANK J. OTERI (b.1965)
Imagined Overtures
1. Natural Selection
2. Intelligent Design
3. Exquisite Panic
We add a drummer to perform New York composer
Frank Oteri's microtonal rock pieces. The
original is for two guitars, bass and drums.
With the added power of the octet, we are
able to bring a new heaviness to these three
explorations of microtuning (splitting a
fret into thirds by retuning). Don't expect
an out-of-tune Rolling Stones. These are
smart compositional investigations that you
can headbang.
NATHANIEL BRADDOCK (b.1971)
Ill Tempered Lancaran
Chicago guitarist/composer Nathaniel Braddock
funnels his knowledge of Javanese gamelan
into six electric guitars and two electric
basses. The result is a aural double-take: "Are
those guitars or bronze gongs?" This
piece confirms the timbral similarity of
two seemingly different types of instrument-guitar
and gamelan. It is written in traditional
Javanese lancaran form and the guitars
retune their strings to achieve the microtonal
nuances of the Javanese slendro tuning.
A False Course from Plain
Guitars turn into bells in Braddock's play with
European bell ringing traditions. We surround
the audience to add a spacial element. Over
the course of 15-20 minutes, patterns emerge
and dodge back into the spare interchange
of eight hocketed notes.
Armour Square Vespers
This wash of microtonal chords gives rise to
unexpected harmonies and beating patterns.
Written for improvising guitars, it plays
with incessant chords with attention to silences
and declamations.
FELIX SALAZAR (b.1978)
Picture Perfect Life
Written for The Los Angeles Electric 8, this
piece explores the sounds of 36-tone equal
temperament tuning (the octave divided into
36 equal parts rather than the traditional
12). Its apparent simplicity is thwarted
by both subtle and suprising rhythmic patterns
and harmonies. Each of the three sections
examine and exploit different aspects of
the tuning while playing with traditional
tuning and tonality.
RANDALL KOHL (b.1960)
Balinesa: El canto de los changos
Contrasting with Braddock’s "Ill Tempered
Lancaran,"
this adaptation of Balinese Kecak brings the
music of 100 men reenacting the a battle from
the Ramayana to electric guitars. The
tight interlocking figures create thick textures
of sound in reminiscent of American minimalist
compositions.
PETER YATES (b.1953)
G-string Fetish
It’s all in the title. Our electric version
of Yates's short work for multiple classical
guitars shows the free improvisational tendencies
of the electric guitar and a greater play with
dynamics.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Organ Sonata in F minor
1. Allegro moderato e
serioso
2. Adagio
3. Andante (Recitative)
4. Allegro assai vivace
The organ and the electric guitar have a lot
in common: the physical distance between
the played instrument and the sound source,
the range of possible effects (organ stops
and guitar pedals), the sheer volume, and
even some timbral similarities. This arrangement
splits the voices juggled by an organist
among six electric guitars and two electric
basses, creating "clean" and "overdriven"
halves of the group. The result showcases the
dynamic timbral range of the electric guitar
and offers another perspective on the music of
the "discoverer" of Johann Sebastian
Bach.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)
Quartetto a 3 Violini con Violoncello
1. Intrada, alla breve
2. Menuetto
3. Capriccio
4. Menuetto
5. Siciliana
While America’s closest approximation to
Leonardo Da Vinci was a proven innovator in musical
instruments and arrangement, his musical taste
was fairly conservative. We couldn’t help
but arrange his severely tonal string quartet
scordatura (retuned to be played on all open
strings) for electric instruments. We stay faithful
to his arrangement by capoing the guitars and
playing open strings with the right hand only.
