#2343: Guitars For Starters

Works by composers who started with guitars, began altering their instruments, and ended up with a whole new sound world are the focus of this edition of New Sounds. Whether it’s adding strings, affixing wooden bars to the instrument, or even stretching the instrument to almost twenty feet in length and playing it like a zither, we’ll hear a variety of approaches to sound. One of these guitarists, Dominic Frasca, in order to adapt certain pieces for guitar, commissioned specially constructed 6-, 10- and 13 string guitars, rigged with C-clamps and door bolts. Paul Dresher is another guitarist/innovator who extended the instrument with the Quadrachord, a zither-like instrument with four 160-inch-long strings. A duo for Quadrachord and Marimba Lumina, “In the Name(less)” is on the program this weekend, with the Dresher Ensemble at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Plus, music by Clogs rounds out the show.

PROGRAM #2343, Music for Adapted Guitars (First aired on Wednesday, 11/10/04)

ARTIST(S)	RECORDING	CUT(S)	SOURCE
Paul Dresher	Cage Machine	Quad 9/4 [4:30] Delta Clave [5:00]	New Albion #NA125. Available at www.dresherensemble.org. Due out soon, through www.newalbion.com*
Clogs	Stick Music	Pencil Stick [6:00]	Brassland #HWY-007 ** www.brassland.org or www.southern.com*
Dominic Frasca	Deviations	Forced Entry [8:30]	www.dominicfrasca.com
Clogs	Stick Music	Beating Stick [6:00]	See above.
Glenn Branca	Symphony #2, The Peak Of the Sacred	Slow Mass, excerpt [14:00]	Atavistic #ALP05 www.atavistic.com

Find the recordings you've heard - go to the New Sounds Recordings Information page