Los Angeles Electric 8

Interlocking Textures

Playing traditional Indonesian music on eight electric guitars is an extension of the guitar's long residency in the archipelago. Portuguese ships brought the first instruments of the guitar family to Indonesia in the 16th century. Ever since, Indonesian musicians have adapted the instrument to indigenous musical traditions, somewhat resisting the colonial power of the guitar as a bearer of Western pop music. In sound, the electric guitar resembles the struck metal of Indonesian gamelans, making it an unlikely yet well-suited host to Indonesian music.

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.

CHARLES T. GRIFFES (1884-1920)

Kinanti

Originally a traditional Javenese song, arranged by Charles Griffes for voice and Piano. Now arranged for 5 standard electric guitars, 1 baritone electric, 1 electric bass and an electric mandolin.

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.

WAYNE SIEGEL (b.1953)

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.

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.

Traditional

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.

NATHANIEL BRADDOCK (b.1971)

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.

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.

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.

Older Repertoire

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.

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.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

	*Octet, Op.11*
	1. Prelude
	2. Scherzo video click here

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.

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)

	Octet
	1. Sinfonia
	2. Tema Con Variazione
	3. Finale

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

FRANK J. OTERI (b.1964)

	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.

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.

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.

NATHANIEL BRADDOCK (b.1971)

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.