I just came from a concert at Disney Hall where the Minimalist Jukebox series presented Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 80 guitars, 20 basses and drums. I took a cellphone photo:
I suspect that to the majority of Forum members, this concert would fall into the very loud noise catagory or you could look at it as, a very loud and evolving complex sound.
There were 4 movements, March, Anthem Drive and Vengeance. About half way through the last movement, the guitars all detuned and then went into full-flail. You had to hear it to believe it.
Curiously enough, I ran into Greg Leisz on the way in, so the steel guitar community had some representation.<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by chas smith on 29 March 2006 at 10:40 PM.]</p></FONT>
Adrienne, no, Greg was in the audience. When the word went out that Glenn was looking for guitar players, I contacted him about wanting to participate, but he said they were only looking for "straight" guitars, not steel guitars. I told him to keep me in mind for the country/western version.
I don't think I see a guitar amp by each player. Was the house sound guy mixing them? If you let 80 guitar players bring their own amps, how many of them will not play too loud?
Doug, it's not easy to see in the photo (that I took), but everyone had their amp behind them. If you look behind the players on the front right, their amps are lying down behind them and the bass amps are behind the players, in the rear. Like I said, it was pretty loud, but not overwhelming. Then again, after 40 years in front of a JBL, how would I know.....<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by chas smith on 30 March 2006 at 03:13 PM.]</p></FONT>
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Postby David Doggett »
Where the hell did they find 80 guitarists, and most amazing, 20 electric bassists who could read music?!? But seriously, I wish I could have heard it. About a year ago they invited every sax player in town to come to the Kimmel Center (The Philadelphia Orchestra's new home) to do a short pre-show in the lobby, to kick of Ornette Coleman as the first performer in a sax series. Over 50 saxes of all sizes showed up, and we performed two unison (sort of) numbers from a balcony overlooking the cavernous lobby. The last verse of the last song devolved into an extended free jazz cacophony. It was a sound I’ll never forget (no matter how hard I try ).
I think it’s interesting that, for centuries prior to electrical amplification, the way to get more volume was to hire more players. That’s how we got 100 piece orchestras and Stan Kenton. But with amplification, a trio can fill any room with sound. And two guitars, bass, drums and a handful of horns can sound like a whole orchestra. So it is a bit of an anachronism to get so many electric guitars together. Two or three with a touch of chorus could have done about the same thing. But maybe not. Chorus is synthetic. Maybe there’s nothing like the shimmer of dozens of players, each in their own idiosyncratic way, playing all the parts. I’d like to hear a couple of dozen steel guitars going at it. That's pro'bly why they didn't invite a bunch of steelers. They would have taken all the interest.
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<font size="1">Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards
MUSIC REVIEW
Guitars thunder, hall reverberates
*A Philharmonic festival centerpiece loudly celebrates the echoing effects of Minimalism.
By Mark Swed, Times Staff Writer
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, you can do better than that. Plug in and play a 100-electric-guitar-plus-one-overexcited-drummer, 70-minute symphony in Walt Disney Concert Hall. In this deafening jingle jangle evening, a couple thousand blissful listeners will surely follow you.
Follow they did, Wednesday night, as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Minimalist Jukebox consumed an imposing amount of electricity. Glenn Branca, a celebrated sonic control freak, blithely unleashed "Hallucination City," the title of his 13th Symphony.
And to further paraphrase Bob Dylan, Branca attempted to take us disappearin' through the smoke rings of our minds, down the foggy ruins of time and far, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Did I say it was loud?
Branca's symphony was the climax of three compelling days of outré Minimalism in the middle of the Philharmonic's two-week festival. This was not the Minimalism of Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich or festival director John Adams but the ear-splitting, mind-mangling, writhing Minimalism they have spawned.
For a movement that initially seemed to be about nothing but itself, to be content with the psychedelic significance of short patterns that revolve around themselves and harmonies that move glacially, musical Minimalism has been remarkably broad — politically, socially, morally and cosmically.
Branca's symphony is the perfect example. The composer has always had close ties with and a large following in the art world, reminding us that visual artists were Glass' and Reich's first supporters in the late '60s and early '70s, when the musical establishment dismissed them. With an interest in theory (exploring quirky tuning patterns with guitars not unlike the way a conceptual artist applies critical theory) and spectacle (100 electric guitars, after all!), Branca is as much performance artist as composer.
Moreover, he thinks sculpturally. He plays with swelling masses of sound as if they were soft clay. It was no surprise that Wednesday's Disney crowd looked exactly as if it had come to a Hammer opening.
Branca also thinks socially and comes across with a rocker's attitude. In a pre-concert talk, he mentioned, but did not expand upon, the political intent of "Hallucination City," which was being given its West Coast premiere in its current version. (The original had its premiere outdoors at the World Trade Center in New York shortly before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)
The four movements are titled March, Anthem, Drive and Vengeance. The first was gripping. Against a monotonous 4/4 beat, the din grew like the sound of an army of Humvees relentlessly closing in, the noise dangerously boring into ear canals. This was the shock of the loud.
But dancing merrily somewhere above our heads — and given extra bounce by Disney's transparent acoustics — were complex, astoundingly rich and glittery overtones from all those guitars. (There weren't really 100, more like a still-impressive 90.) Meanwhile, some 15 bass guitars caused the floors and seats to vibrate. One listened through one's whole body.
Ushers provided earplugs, which pretty much spoiled the piece by blocking the highs. But even without them, as ears adjusted, a certain sense of diminishing returns began to accrue about halfway through the work: The thrill lasted only so long, and the migraine-making blowout at the end was an anticlimax.
But Branca's sound is astonishing. And it has reverberated in more ways than just acoustically. Adams mentioned to me before the concert that he believed it had a profound influence on the music of Michael Gordon, one of the founders of Bang on a Can.
The previous night, the USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, enlarged to full orchestra size, presented the queasy "symphony" that Gordon wrote to accompany a film project called "Decasia." Here too were masses of sound made from smudged pitches (some instruments were asked to play in tune while other instruments tuned slightly sharp or flat). When they moved in loud glissandos, your stomach could feel somewhere other than where it normally rests.
Bill Morrison's film, made from chemically decayed silent movies, is just as disturbing. Everyday images are constantly transformed by what appears to be some inexplicable organic force. Gordon's music, conducted by Donald Crockett and magnificently played by the USC students, brilliantly magnified and enhanced everything that was unsettling on the screen.
As big events, "Hallucination City" and "Decasia" did a pretty good job of drowning out some of the more modest and seductive Minimalism that was also part of this week, such as Paul Dresher's alluring "Channels Passing," which preceded "Decasia."
As part of the Monday Evening Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California EAR Unit produced a fascinating program that included new and recent works. Mark Grey's "The Sleepless Dream," an ethereal score in memory of Stephen "Lucky" Mosko, had its premiere. Also from this year and given its American premiere was Linda Bouchard's refreshing "Liquid States." Here, the Canadian composer created a wonderfully mellow metallic jingle jangle from having players attack the inside of a piano with mallets and brushes.
That is an interesting review. It reminds me that 20 years ago I was invited by They Might Be Giants to be part of a piece they were doing where 50 guitarists got on stage and performed either Mr. Tamborene Man or Blowing in the Wind - some classic Dylan tune. There was no rehersal and no time to tune up - just come up on the stage and do it. Not sure it was that memorable.
As I recall, the final movement started with one section of players all playing/trilling a single "E" note, then another section until all of the sections were playing that single "E". There was quite a variety of interpretations as to what frequency "E" could be, and the cumulative effect was this wonderfully (if you like that kind of stuff, like I do) dense shimmering note that filled the hall.
Engineering some punk bands where they wanted to overdub distorted rhythm guitars 20 times to achieve a 'wall of noise' I noticed an interesting effect. After 4 or 5 overdubs adding more guitars actually makes it QUIETER not louder (due to destructive interference of the sound waves).
I wonder if there is a similar effect at work here.
Matt
"I wonder if there is a similar effect at work here"
Yes and no. The phenomena of phase cancellations and sum and difference tones, in music confined in an electric medium, like tape or a hardrive, is more dramatic than music "in the air". As I recall from patchpoint synthesizer days, an equal amplitude sine wave, 180 out of phase, on tape, will cancel itself out, but coming out of opposite speakers, it can bounce around the room and be very perceptable ( it was a technique I used, on a larger scale, in quad, where depending on where you were sitting in the room, the piece would sound different). Or, recording an open back amp, the mic in the back is 180 out, to support the mic in the front,but live, it doesn't seem to matter.
Glenn is relying on the mass of sound in the room to generate "stuff". About 25 yrs ago, I went to a performance of his at the Newport Harbor Museum. It was a relatively small space with hard walls, floors and ceilings . There were at least a dozen guitars with amps "cranked up" very loud. It wasn't so much as being loud, but rather, the room was very thick with sound.
You could think of this sound as being a large mass, in a sculptural sense, that is constantly evolving, because the guitar players are slowly changing what they are playing. In addition the the evolution of what is being played, there is another evolution happening, independant of the playing (the indeterminant part of the composition), and that's the perceptual phenomena of the sum and difference tones happening in the air.
b0b, according to what I could find, the release of Symphony 13 will be sometime in 2006 by Bang On A Can's Cantaloupe Music. And a lot of his other stuff is on: http://www.atavistic.com/artist.cfm?thisArtist=60
There was an interview, published in the LA Weekly, before the performance: http://www.laweekly.com/music/12938/stratocaster-collage/
And as an aside, he mentions having heard a "difficult" piano work by Messiaen. I suspect that it might have been, Catalogue d'oiseaux, for piano, or Oiseaux exotiques, for orch and piano solo. One of the things that Messiaen did was listen to and transcribe bird calls/sounds for piano. His wife, Yvonne Loriod, was a concert pianist.
Also, our friends over at Dusted did a review of Glenn. http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/1403
<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by chas smith on 03 April 2006 at 03:42 PM.]</p></FONT>
you can't really make me out, but i'm the section leader of the alto sevens. i should have posted that i was going to be performing this piece, but i've been super busy. it would have been nice to chat with some forumites that appreciate music like this.
i have been a part of the branca symphony #13 orchestra since its premier in aug. 2001 at the wtc. it is a truly incredible piece, and i felt from my vantage point that this was the best performance of it yet. my right arm is still killing me.
" it would have been nice to chat with some forumites that appreciate music like this."
Considering the cliche-view of steel guitarists (I remember being at a session once, where there was a collective display of amazement that I had been to college) there seems to be a wide range of musical interests here on the Forum.
"i felt from my vantage point that this was the best performance of it yet. my right arm is still killing me"
Musically, from my perspective, it was complex and very powerful and as a perfomance piece, it was very fun and enjoyable as well as complex and powerful.
But seriously, I wish I could have heard it. About a year ago they invited every sax player in town to come to the Kimmel Center (The Philadelphia Orchestra's new home) to do a short pre-show in the lobby, to kick of Ornette Coleman as the first performer in a sax series. Over 50 saxes of all sizes showed up, and we performed two unison (sort of) numbers from a balcony overlooking the cavernous lobby. The last verse of the last song devolved into an extended free jazz cacophony. It was a sound I’ll never forget (no matter how hard I try 
).
