Barry Chabala
an unrhymed chord (for 25 guitars) (Confront)
ccs9

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First edition - 200 copies CDR

'The score for Michael Pisaro's beautiful and haunting 'an unrhymed chord' is basically a few instructions and time constraints. The performer can makes any sound they like, sustained for between one and fifteen minutes in each thirty minute half of the piece, placed anywhere they choose and the longer the duration, the lower the amplitude. Simple, right? After immersing myself in both Greg Stuart's version for percussion instruments and Joseph Kudirka's electronic version, I started thinking about how this piece might work for guitar. I wanted to remain as organically acoustic as possible while at the same time fulfilling the score's requirements that some sounds sustain up to fifteen minutes. Using only an acoustic archtop guitar, a microphone and various techniques for exciting the strings, the realization took shape. While some of the sounds created are somewhat less than guitar like, I did try and let the wood of the instrument come through and used some traditional plucked and picked notes to retain the traditional character of the instrument.' Barry Chabala

"Everything is very gentle and very beautiful. Where the occasional rougher, textural sounds appear they tend to be quieter, sitting in the background and overlaid with soft glowing tones. When the chiming notes appear they are generally clustered together with little else in the background. When ebowed sounds appear they rarely sit alone, instead they overlay other similar sounds so the combination often creates an addition beating effect. In short, Chabala’s realisation is a very intelligent response to a score that could be followed in a very loose way should the musician choose, but here he has created a piece of music that takes Pisaro’s score as a starting point, following it to the letter, but develops outwards into a work of great individual character." (thewatchfulear.com)