When Metal Machine Music was released in 1975, people did not know what to make of it. The album, influenced by the drone music of La Monte Young and John Cale,  consists entirely of guitar feedback played at different speeds.

Two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. Reed then placed the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings — the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track tape recorder in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo.

Reed recreated Metal Machine Music live with his Metal Machine Trio at the Gramercy Theatre in New York earlier this week:

The small venue was probably only half full and its patrons consisted mostly of intellectual types and hard-core Reed fans. Long before the band came on, the sound system was playing an unnerving dissonant loop that seemed to keep getting louder. When they took the stage, Reed and his band, tenor saxophonist Ulrich Kreiger and Continuum (a touch sensitive MIDI keyboard) player Sarth Calhoun wasted little time for pleasantries before they dove into the apocalyptic rush, although Reed announced appreciatively beforehand, “I just want to tell you how happy I am to see you all here tonight.”

There were no “songs,” but instead the musicians churned out a continuous blaring fog that rose and decreased in its deafening intensity, marked by shrill electronic shrieks, long demented sax solos and Reed’s occasional yelling voice.

At the end of the show the controversy surrounding the album had manifested itself visibly: almost a quarter of the original audience had left. Many people who had stayed seemed to have done so as a matter of pride. Their faces looked pained and anguished. Some people had a look of pleasant calm, however. The band themselves had been grinning through their performance, having a good time as the music got louder and more unbearable.

Brian Eno wrote about Metal Machine Music in his 1995 diary, A Year With Swolen Appendices:

Metal Machine Music was released the same week — twenty years ago — as Discreet Music.

Discreet Music soft, calm, melodic and reassuringly repetitive, without a single sound other than tape hiss about 1500 Hz, whereas MMM is as abrasive and unmelodic as possible, with almost nothing below — and yet they occupy two ends of what was at the time a pretty new axis — music as immersion, as sonic experience in which you float.

The roots of Ambient.

It’s interesting that Eno sees Metal Machine Music as one end of the spectrum of ambient music.

For most, though – Metal Machine Music remains a challenge to endure:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Applied Acoustics Systems has released Strum Electric GS-1, a guitar track production plug-in for music producers and composers.

Strum Electric GS-1 runs on both Mac OS X and Windows, as a standalone application as well as in host sequencers supporting the VST, Audio Units, and RTAS plug-in formats.

You can preview Strum Electric GS-1 below:

Strum Electric GS-1 is available now at a retail price of $229.

If you’ve used AAS Strum Electric GS-1, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Description:

Strum Electric includes a collection of classic single coil- and humbucker-fitted guitars, a two-channel amplifier with spring reverb, a speaker cabinet, and effects all featured in a ready-made preset library. It also includes an elaborate voicing module which automatically voices chords played on the keyboard as a guitar player would on the fretboard.

Techniques such as down- and up-strokes, slides and bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs, palm muting, muffled strings, and arpeggios are triggered by special strumming keys. Strum Electric also ships with an inspiring MIDI loops library which provides rhythmic figures, strumming patterns, and chord progressions in various musical styles.

Note that demo versions and sound samples are also available at :

This video showcases a new invention from MIT Media Lab student Amit Zoran – the Chameleon Guitar:

The Chameleon Guitar is an electric guitar whose body has a separate central section that is removable. This inserted section, the soundboard, can be switched with one made of a different kind of wood, or with a different structural support system, or with one made of a different material altogether. Then, the sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by a computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber.

Zoran built the first proof of concept version last summer, with a variety of removable wooden inserts. The concept worked, so he went on to build a more polished version with an easier quick-change mechanism for switching the inserts, so that a musician could easily change the sound of the instrument during the course of a concert — providing a variety of sound characteristics, but always leaving the same body, neck and frets so that the instrument always feels the same.

Ffive electronic pickups provide detailed information about the wood’s acoustic response to the vibration of the strings. This information is then processed by the computer to simulate different shapes and sizes of the resonating chamber.

“The original signal is not synthetic, it’s acoustic,” Zoran says. “Then we can simulate different shapes, or a bigger instrument.” The guitar can even be made to simulate shapes that would be impossible to build physically. “We can make a guitar the size of a mountain,” he says. Or the size of a mouse.

It’s fascinating research.

Would you play a Chameleon Guitar?

via Cybermusic on Twitter

This is a preview of Craig Anderton’s new Electronic Guitars Expansion Pack for Rapture and Rapture LE.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has put out a call for 80 guitarists and 20 bass guitarists for a performance of experimental composer Glenn Branca’ Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City). 

The performance will be at The Pageant in St. Louis on Nov. 13 and is part of the SLSO Guitar Festival.

Here is a video from a rehearsal for a previous performance:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are the details:

• Two rehearsals at Powell Hall:
Nov. 11 from 2pm to midnight & Nov. 12 from 5pm to midnight

• Sound Check at The Pageant:
Nov. 13 from 1:30pm to 5:30pm

• Concert at The Pageant:
Nov. 13 at 8pm

Compensation is not possible, but food and drink will be supplied at all rehearsals and the performance. All musicians will need to be able to read standard staff notation and follow a part measure by measure.

Ranjit Bhatnagar made this video showing the results of his junk guitar workshop at Etsy labs.

It makes me want to make a 2′ x 4′ guitar, too…..

In conversation with Rich, he mentioned that he is fascinated by weather. His journal entries from his 2003 tour make reference to the intense weather he experienced, and the impressions it made on him. This is reflected in the packaging for his CD, which seems to document a shamanic ritual to the sky and its results.

The CD captures 8 improvisations, ranging in length from five minutes to over twenty. Rich varies the instrumentation from track to track, demonstrating his skill and subtlety on guitar, flute, & synths. He also uses sampled or taped environmental sounds. The tracks range from ambient in style to mournful instrumentals. On some of the tracks, it’s clear that Rich is using alternate tunings.

Rich seems less interested in the unpredictability and power of weather, and more in the sense of mystery and awe it can inspire.

Erasing Traces starts the CD off. On this track, Rich solos with electric guitar over synth drones. His guitar work is meditative and has more of an Indian feel to it rather than blues inflections. Rich’s unique approach doesn’t provide many reference points, but Terje Rypdal’s playing comes to mind.

With the next track, Overhead, the focus is on slowly evolving synth textures. Vertigo and Supplication combine nature sounds with shifting synth textures, and muted sequences. Rich closes the CD with one of the most haunting tracks, Recognition. This track again feature Rich’s electric guitar work, which gives the album a sense of return or closure at the end.

The CD as a whole provides a relaxing collection of tracks that make an attractive ambient soundtrack. Rich fills the music with enough detail, variety and tension, though, that the music is rewarding with any level of focus.

Tracks:

• Erasing Traces 13:17
• Overhead 5:34
• Vertigo 21:34
• Supplication 7:23
• Borealis 6:01
• Lost Landmarks 6:25
• Adrift 4:56
• Recognition 8:50

Total Time 74:02