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minimalist jukebox part II, Glenn Branca

last night the long lines of leather and colored hair resembled saturday night at my local club mr. t’s bowl than disney hall.

i kinda chuckled to myself as i passed this sign as i entered disney hall

the music being
performed on
tonight’s program
is amplified

should you need
earplugs, they are
available from
our ushers

yeah right, just an public service announcement to cover themselves if the bluehairs complained.

….wrong

it was loud, not just musically loud or rock concert loud, but performance art loud.

i’m not really sure if i witnessed a music concert or an art installation. after settling and watching the pure spectacle of 100 guitarists onstage (well maybe 84 according to ryan at losanjealous) i closed my eyes and let the sound take me over. i soon felt like i was hallucinating and layers of my skin were separating from my face. not in painful physical sort of way, but in that all so special private existential crisis.

after the initial sound explosion, eventually my body and ears adapted to the performance, which mostly consisted of more of the same wave after wave of strumming. after a while i realized branca had no intention of using any contrasts in dynamics to create any tension. he tried to get them to play soft in a few sections, but how about inserting a tacet here and there for greater effect? he did vary the tempos between the four mvts. labeled march, anthem, drive, and vengeance.

the sound was like nothing i had heard before, not really any discernable pitch but mostly the physical sensation air and noise being pushed through the amps. the main (and i think only) performance technique being used was a fast tremolo.
no chords, notes or lines being played at all during the evening. since each guitar was being treated as a single note percussion instrument the result was more akin to listening to rhythmic counterpoint rounds passed through the ensemble.

the setup for the evening was pretty simple, each guitarist brought his/her own amp that was pointed straight up toward the ceiling. scanning the program notes the branca organized the “guitar orchestra” similar to ATBB ( alto, tenor, baritone, bass) chorus with the alto guitar strings tuned to B or E(in octaves), tenor guitars tuned to G (in octaves), and the bass guitars tuned to normally. the ensemble was split into 25 different parts and one drummer. on paper this at least implied the attempt at orchestration. in reality the orchestration elements seemed to resemble a more modular approach to composition and orchestration (terry riley).

the descriptions of this concert and the new samuel l. jackson movie both have one thing in common.

the titles are much more interesting than the product

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Related posts:

  1. minimalist jukebox, part I
  2. minimalist jukebox part IV, minimalism is dead!
  3. minimalist jukebox part III, terry riley
  4. steve reich-you are (variations)-la master chorale performance
  5. minimalist/postmodern listening list

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 1:29 pm and is filed under blog and tagged with , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

3 Responses to “minimalist jukebox part II, Glenn Branca”

  1. Anonymous says:
    April 1, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    Yeah. Loud. Yeah.

    The terry riley concert at UCLA a few months back was the same way. A rock band in the concert hall, insanely loud. The AcidMothersTemple from japan definetely destroyed our hearing that night.

    carl

    so that explains why my ears still hurt…
    veronica.

  2. glenn branca says:
    April 5, 2006 at 10:55 am

    Some technical corrections:

    you say: “each guitar was being treated as a single note percussion instrument” IN FACT EACH GUITAR HAD A TWO AND A HALF OCTAVE RANGE WHICH IS USED THROUGHOUT.

    you say: “the main (and i think only) performance technique being used was a fast tremolo” IN FACT DOWNSTROKED CHORDS AND RHYTHMS ARE USED EXTENSIVELY IN THE FIRST MOVEMENT AND FOURTH MOVEMENT AND IN THE THIRD ARE ALMOST THE ONLY TECHNIQUE FOR THE FIRST TWO THIRDS.

    you say: “no chords, notes or lines being played at all during the evening” THIS IS A FALSE AND ABSURD STATEMENT.

    AS FAR AS LACK OF DYNAMICS IS CONCERNED: THE FIRST MOVEMENT, WHICH WAS 23 MINUTES, HAD MANY SECTIONS ALL THROUGHOUT IN WHICH THERE WERE OFTEN AS FEW AS 20% OF THE GUITARS PLAYING, AND THOSE AT piano.

    THAT COVERS SOME (BUT NOT ALL) OF THE TECH ERRORS IN YOUR REVIEW.
    IF YOU WERE TO SAY THAT YOU COULDN’T HEAR ANY OF THIS, IT COULD ONLY BE WILLFUL IGNORANCE ON YOUR PART.
    I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DID NOT LIKE THE PIECE BUT TO DISSEMENATE FALSE INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE AN ACCEPTABLE PRACTICE ESPECIALLY FOR A MUSICIAN.

  3. paul bailey says:
    April 5, 2006 at 11:39 am

    glenn,

    sorry that we do not agree on some things. i think your piece is far more successful as theatre. the rest are my opinions and observations from where i was sitting. as in any composition, if there is confusion describing the elements of a given piece, than i (or you) might take it that conceptually parts of the music were not being heard by the audience. maybe it was the hall, but heard very little pitch from the guitars during the evening.

    i have heard from a few friends that the outdoor performances of your pieces are much better. my comments are only related to the performance at disney. i like loud music and i enjoyed the first 12 minutes.

    paul

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