This is from a home recording from 2004-5. It's originally for classical guitar, but this version is for electric guitar with added effects to enhance the "indian" quality of the work. The music is based on the Golden Means ratio - a mathematical ratio found in nature.
I know this blog is mainly for classical guitar, but for those who might also be interested in electric guitar and contemporary music, I'll be putting all my old home recording tracks up at www.youtube.com/avantpopmusic over the next few weeks.
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3 comments:
Nice post, I'm planning to look at more contemporary electric guitar works over the summer.
Actually, Duo Verdejo is giving an electric guitar and viola concert today at the Northwest Guitar Festival in Victoria. You just primed my concert experience!
This performance may not be played on a "classical guitar," but as far as I am concerned the piece is still classical music. A genre in which the norm historically has been to bring new instruments into "the fold." And in many instances as a matter of fact, the new ended up superceding the old -- the piano over the harpsichord; the guitar over the lute.
There is no danger, of course, that the electric guitar will ever supercede the classical instrument. Indeed, there is scant danger -- this century anyway -- that music played on an electric guitar will ever enjoy the moniker "classical" among the genre's poobah's.
Nevertheless in my book this is a classical piece, not a popular one. Primarily because the relationship between the piece, the composer, and the performer accords with the classical model, not the popular.
What dominates the popular model, during modern times, has been pieces -- usually songs -- that are wholly identified with their performers. For example, who besides Jethro Tull will ever perform "Thick as a Brick"?
Of course within the popular genres there are "standards," especially in jazz and bluegrass; but in country too, and there are even a few in rock I suppose. But what dominates popular music today is a wholesale identification of pieces with their performers.
In the classical model, of course, the pieces exist wholly independently of individual performers or groups. Which is why Sor's and Beethoven's music will still be played live long after Ian Anderson's idiomatic tunes have become relics only heard on recordings.
Clearly, not being bound to any individualistic idiom, this piece and others like it could be communicated in their sum and substance via the classical methods of pedagogy -- and in turn -- interpreted by individual performers within the bounds of the classical paradigm. Which, for me anyway, makes the fact that they are played on an instrument that today's "keepers of the gate" have yet to christen immaterial. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
So in sum, I would aver that your new channel might be more aptly be named "avantclassical." :D
it's rare that I would choose a classical guitar piece to be played on the electric guitar, but this piece is an exception. The high position playing plays and sings more easily on the electric and the overall atmosphere of the piece seems to work with the shinier tone of steel strings.
I agree - the classical guitar is much better suited for solo playing and is in no danger of being replaced anytime soon.
I'm not sure about genre titles anymore. Some people would call this new age music, and in some ways, i wouldn't disagree with them, although under the surface texture, there is some very advanced compositional techniques going on
best
Kevin
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