sumtone michael edwards don t flinch

sumtone : michael edwards don t linch or acoustic-electric guitar and couter

michael edwards don t linch or acoustic-electric guitar and couter

programme note The title is taken rom the poem Don t Flinch by Adrienne Rich: Lichen-green lines o shingle pulsate and waver when you lit your eyes. It s the glare. Don t linch The news you were reading (who trales whom) is antique and on the death pages you ve seen already worms doing their normal work on the lie that was: the chewers chewing at a sensuality that wrestled doom an anger steeped in love they can t even taste. How could this still shock or sicken you? Friends go missing, mute nameless.. Toss the paper. Reach again or the Iliad. The lines pulse into sense. Turn up the music Now do you hear it? can you smell smoke under the near shingles? The bottleneck guitar sound was utmost in my mind rom the very beginning o working on this piece. I have a very strong and ond memory o watching Ry Cooder play the guitar with a bottleneck on the now deunct UK TV music show The Old Grey Whistle Test when I was about three or our years old. The sound o this has remained with me my whole lie and is strongly associated with the guitar or me personally. Other techniques speciic to the guitar were also used in this piece: string rattles created by delicately touching a vibrating open string with either the ingernail or the bottleneck; dierent plucking positions, rom near the bridge to on the ingerboard; tremolo with and without a plectrum; glissandi; exaggerated vibrato with and without the bottleneck; various single and double harmonics; and pitch bends. Viewed historically, this is essentially an instrument-plus-tape piece. The couter is used only to trigger stereo sound iles, sometimes at the push o a pedal, other times once the onset o a guitar note is detected. Silicity was utmost in my mind in choosing to use the couter in this way as I wanted Yvonne and perhaps other guitarists to be able to perorm the piece without my presence being necessary. The piece is deinitely out o the ordinary in having what is essentially a conventionally notatable couter part. Most electronic coonents in music o this kind consist mainly o sounds that could only be made perhaps especially rhythmically with couters or other electronic equipment. I was attracted in this piece to the idea o creating an almost acoustic instrumental trio, but having the luxury o continuously modiying, reining, and spectrally shaping two o the voices through digital production techniques. In addition to sotware salers and synthesizers, several other sounds were mixed in: a recording o mysel irovising on tenor saxophone; mysel reciting Rich s poem; recordings o sheep; and Artaud s Pour en inir avec le jugement de dieu. The latter was used purely or its sonic and not its semantic content.

notes + indicates ingering with a metal bottleneck. The wavy line indicates molto vibrato (very exaggerated). In order to create a loud enough sound, it is recommended to aly this technique across all the strings no matter which note is to be played. To create vibrato on an octave harmonic, irst strike the harmonic without vibrato, then immediately begin vibrato on the normal ingered note. The + ollowed by a dotted line indicates delicately placing the bottleneck on the vibrating open string (or other, as indicated) so that the two come into contact and produce a buzzy rattle. These sounds might not last as long as the indicated line; they may indeed be considerably shorter, though eort should be made to make them sound as long as indicated (the note can be made to sound longer by gently taing the string with the bottleneck). Similar to the bottleneck rattle, this symbol indicates the same eect but created with the inger nail. sul tasto estremo: pluck very close to the ingers o the let hand. : pluck normally, over the. only alies to a single note, unless a bracket is used. Harmonics are indicated as usual by a small circle over the sounding note (open strings are indicated by the numeral 0). Most harmonics are o the sile octave variety but i others are required, then the nodal point at which the string is touched is indicated by a diamond notehead below the sounding note. Unless using the plectrum, tremolandi are to be played with two or more ingernails. All tremolandi are unmeasured and as ast as possible. Tremolando chords ily repetition o all notes unless otherwise indicated (i.e. stems up and down, only one o which has tremolo). In every case, the main note should stand out at the beginning and the tremolo should be very much in the background o it, like a shadow. Pause length can vary widely rom negligible to very long according to the acoustic and the taste o the perormer. Accidentals carry throughout the bar but are repeated in parentheses as deemed necessary. They do not repeat at octaves in either chords or melodic lines. Meter and barlines are or visual organisation only; they ily no metrical stress. The couter part is notated on three staves below the guitar part. Only pitched sounds are indicated. Blue downward arrows indicate couter trigger points. The sound ile number is indicated next to these (or inormation only). Sound will generally enter at the next point indicated in the couter part. Two pedals, Let and Right, are used to trigger the sound iles. These are indicated by the letters L and R, in red, above the blue arrow. The let pedal arms the couter so that the next guitar note triggers a sound ile. The right pedal triggers immediately. Quoted words in blue are in the couter part; these occur synchronously with the indicated notes (not all audible words are notated, however). Duration c. 13.5 minutes.

perormance requirements acoustic-electric guitar. guitar aliier: output rom the guitar should be ed and played through the a, as well as being sent out to the couter. two high-quality microphones to urther aliy the acoustic guitar. couter: preerably a quiet Macintosh laptop running the perormance sotware (unless Macintosh, this will need MaxMSP 5; runtime version acceptable). The perormance sotware can be ordered rom http://sumtone.com/perormance-materials.php good quality sound card (2 mic and 1 line inputs; stereo output) two pedals attached to the couter and recognisable by the perormance sotware. Keith McMillen Instruments Sotstep preerred. two high-quality speakers positioned either near to and to the let and right o the guitairist, or as part o a PA. stereo analogue volume control knob (optional). couter setup The couter is used during the perormance to trigger sound iles played on the two speakers. The sound iles have been mixed so that they balance well with the live guitar at the point at which they are playing. No gain adjustment should be necessary during perormance, i.e., no sound engineer is required (though this may be desirable). There is, however, provision in the sotware or adjusting levels during perormance, i more than two pedals are available. See the readme. txt ile that comes with the sotware or more details about this and other aspects o the couter system. Overall gain should be set during rehearsal using either the gain sliders on the sotware provided, and/or, preerably, with a stereo analogue level control knob (this will oer instant and secure control over levels should the couter or sound card crash). The levels should be set so that the guitar is clearly audible but in equal balance with the sound iles at the beginning.

2 10 A poco 0 0 13 poco (artiicial harmonic rom Eb one octave below) 16 0 poco 0

3 19 5 B 4 4 0 5 22 p sub 5 25 4 0 poco 28 V

31 5 4 (poco ) 34 5 0 (ord) sub C 3 4 38 IV 0 (ord) (IV) 41 sub 4

5 45 0 0 sul tasto sub cresc. (no vib.) 49 D sub 2 54 57 () sul tasto sul tasto estremo 4 3

6 61 5 sul tasto 0 65 () 68 sul tasto sul tasto estremo 0

7 71 p 0 74 p E 78 p 81 p sub G: F: sere

84 () 3 F 89 p 8 93 4 "don't linch" p "lichen" sub "green" "lines" poco 97 "o" G 5 "o shingle"

9 101 6 "pul-" "-sate" sul tasto estremo p 105 "and" 7 108 8 "wa--ver" H "you" "when" 112 9 "lit" "your" "it's the" "eyes"

116 0 0 I 10 plectrum "don't linch" V 121 12 125 128 V 11 5 "the news" p 3 4 p 0 sul tasto "were" 13 "who trales whom" 14 10 "you" "rea-ding"

11 133 J "is" (ord.) "antique 137 140 144 "the" (ord.) "the" and" "death" K no plectrum 15 "on" 0 p

12 16 148 "death pages" 17 0 18 152 () 156

13 159 () 19 L (no more bottleneck) 163 167 M 170 20 "lines..." p M

175 cresc. 14 180 (ossia: take harmonic on B string) 4 183 poco p 1 2