Trash TV Trance

Since first performing Mauricio Pauly’s Sky Destroys Dog as part of my undergrad recital back in 2015, the score for Romitelli’s Trash TV Trance has sat on my desk. It (I assume) was bought for me as an encouragement-infused thank you by Mauricio who was keen to see my involvement in new music continue, post-Dog. I would open the score periodically and work through different sections in search of what lay beneath the many challenges which this relatively simple-looking score presents. Having finally found the time during lockdown to string all these together and perform the piece in its entirety, I thought I'd share some musings from along the curve. 

Musings…

Whilst learning the piece I quickly imagined how I might go about recording a studio version so as to overcome a number of difficulties encountered in live performance. These, at least based upon my own interpretation, mainly have to do with portraying a more profound sense of dimensionality within the musical material. In the performance notes included in the score, Tom Pauwels sums up by quoting Romitelli:

‘In the end it’s more important that the piece sounds “really trashy” as Fausto might have said.’

The challenge with this is that the music is often so multilayered that the pursuit of trashiness can quickly result in the loss of distinction and detail. Particularly within the layering of individual voices and textures which is precisely where I feel much of the beauty and brilliance of this work lies. And so I found there to be an inherent tension. A balancing act. Fueled by an eagerness to translate the intricate architecture of the score within the most sonically complex of passages, I set out to meet somewhere at the crossroads between trashiness and clarity. 

Whilst studying the score I began to see just how well the piece had been composed for the electric guitar. Romitelli makes full use of certain idiomatic techniques and sounds e.g. pick-scrapes, bends between the same note on fretted and open strings, jack noise, left and right-hand tapping, bottleneck/slide, left-hand slides, 5th chords, natural harmonics, e-bow, wah pedal, delay and distortion. What I find compelling is how innovatively he combines these to create new, complex and engaging soundscapes. Each of which uniquely develops and transforms the relatively small amount of musical material and motifs which form the basis of the entire work. Adopting Lachenmann’s terminology, these ideas can be found expressed in both the structure-sound (Strukturklang), the timbral detail and variation within individual sounds (e.g. modulating the coin scrapes with the e-bow and the two contrasting densities of jack noise produced by grounding and ungrounding the signal through the performers body), and the sound-structure (Klangstruktur), the construction of larger passages extrapolated from these individual detailed sounds which develop and increase in intensity over a greater periods of time. Analysing the harmonic content within the context of the score, you can see how Romitelli uses many different variations of articulating a relatively small set of pitches so as to stretch smaller ideas right out across the entire landscape of the work. Take the note G for example. There are many ways this pitch is toyed with, both in how it's articulated, and how the thresholds of the pitch itself are pushed and stretched between the surrounding pitches.. 

Plucked open G string + L hand tap and bend up from F#-G + R hand drifts in and out of G, articulated with the bow.

Downward gliss from G articulated with side of a coin + L hand tap and bend up from F#-G.

The loop beneath this section captures the unplugged jack noise. At leats in my case, this also contains some resonance between F#-G.

The same can be seen for E and B. Much of the harmonic content is continually flexing between these three notes.

The open E loop is followed by a coin glass from E-G.

A cluster of close pitches.

Created using bends and open strings. Through bending the strings the floating bridge of the guitar slackens, slightly lowering the pitch of the open strings, resulting in an even more dissonant pulsating between pitches.

This E minor triad is of course indicative of the electric guitar and therefore automatically informing the listener of the instrument's cultural and historical context within which the work itself is inherently entangled. However, it’s also a side effect of the mechanisms which Romitelli uses to explore the instrument. Broadly speaking, there are two types of layering I consider to be overarching characteristics of this work: Cumulative - the layering, repetition and unlayering of both recorded mechanical/perfect loops and performed/imperfect loops. Textural-Harmonic - the layering of closely related harmonies as individual voices and the means by which each of these voices is articulated so as to produce contrasting nuances in timbre. Though these are somewhat broad, and there is of course a lot of crossover between these overarching characteristics, I find it helpful to think about them individually so as to pinpoint certain processes and decisions that I felt were important to inform interpretation.

Textural-Harmonic

Harmonically, the piece is much more challenging than it appears. This is largely due to the level of sensitivity needed within certain extended or non-typical playing techniques. A large part of this harmonic material plays with the closeness of pitches. This is most explicit in sections such as bars 75-108 (from @3:04 in the video, also shown in the first score excerpt) where 3 distinct voices each employ different techniques so as to gradually drift closer and further apart. There is a dance happening here whereby one must carefully balance each voice to create a sufficient sense of space whereby the listener is able to perceive each of these layers and the interactions between them. There are 3 different techniques here, one for each voice -left hand tapping, left hand plucking of the open E, B and G strings, and col legno with a violin bow on the low E string. The slight difference in timbre which results form each of these techniques does somewhat help to distinguish each voice. However, the dynamics of each must be carefully controlled. If played too unrestrainedly the plucked open strings dominate. Therefore, a large part of my practice was focused on gaining control of each of these voices thus providing equal opportunity for them to come to the foreground when and where musical gestures in the material permit. However, in trying to squeeze all this information through one pick-up and down a mono jack cable, there is a very real threshold to how successful one can be. To help with this, I slightly dropped the tempo going into the sponge section at bar 54 (02:15) as the tempo for the bow is initially defined by the speed of the sponge loop (I’d like to go slower still!). 

Clarity can be further hindered by oversaturating the signal with too much distortion and/or a distortion which is at source already very compressed. The decisions made here are paramount to the effectiveness of the techniques and object-sounds across the entire work. If not carefully considered can result in the work becoming a mush when overdone or flat when too clean. I used a fairly transparent sounding overdrive (see Barber Burn Unit) layered with an Ibanez Tube Screamer for the sections that required more sustain. I’ve always preferred using lower gain overdrives such as these. However, in the context of this work the left hand tapping then required a lot more strength of attack in order to deliver enough sustain. When using valve amps, one is able to vary the amount of saturation with the dynamics of their playing. It’s worth noting that there is a significant level of saturation naturally achieved with this set-up simply via the intervallic structures Romitelli uses. I chose to use 2 amps whereby I could use a stereo delay and slightly different EQ profiles to broaden the sense of width. Where objects are used I simply made a few decisions that would accentuate the sound of each. Such as slightly increasing pressure and turning the coin during the glisses to activate the string more and add brightness. Or choosing an electric razor which produces a frequency in a range so as to occupy its own space in the mix. Although not an object in the same way, sculpting the bass response on the unplugged jack was also done for this same reason.  

Cumulative

Looping is now a widely used technique across many different musical genres and can be used to different musical effects (see Michelle Lou, Opal; Mauricio Pauly, Charred Edifice Shining; Apes Grapes: OIRDC; Bernhard Lang: Loops for Dr. X'; Mark Ribillet: Get Up and Marek Poliks: muxer). The way a performer interacts with this musical layer also generates unique and performance-diffining results. My approach has been determined by the nature of the overlaying musical material as well as the way in which the composer communicates the dichotomy of these recorded and played parts through the score. I tried to play as though being part of the loops, overlaying the new material as though intertwined rather than pushing or pulling away in momentum. This produces another dynamic within the performance, requiring rhythmic accuracy whilst also maintaining a sense of groove which has a certain breath to it. It’s worth observing the varying densities of loops used in this work. It is common that this technique can cause the overall landscape of a work to appear cone shaped (<) as new layers are added over time. However, for the large part, the loops contrast in density and where they begin and end is often blended in with/obscured by new and/or existing material. As a performer, there’s an important level of sensitivity needed to shape these moments whilst maintaining the sense of flow and continuity. I often find this to be largely governed by carefully controlling dynamics -both in my playing and across the individual gain stages/volumes of each pedal. To this end, I set the volume of all the recorded loops to be 3db lower than the volume at which they were recorded. Although somewhat noticeable, it did provide more clarity to much of the overlaid material -both when adding more layers to the buffer and playing over the top.

Duration-wsie, there are some difficult, quick changes to be made especially in the opening section between the e-bow, jack noise and coin scrapes but I do feel that the momentum here is important and that the duration of each section has been well considered. For me this is particularly effective at 05:58 where the recorded loop establishes a level of momentum that fails just when we begin to get familiar with it. As listeners we rely on the sense of buoyancy established following the more varied material which increasingly hints at repetition. We begin to trust the loop and then it quickly changes direction. For the material which utilises the unplugged jack cable I tried to be more mechanical, viewing this as a monolithic, disruptive sound with how it interrupts the surrounding material. For this reason I also elongated firmatas so as to create a greater sense of relief and, in turn, amplify the impact of the sound when it comes back in with the reversed loop. Sound-wise, I spent some time experimenting with my overdrive pedal’s EQ profile so as to provide a good amount of bass response for this part.

Nice-takes vs miss-takes

I think I've been somewhat successful. 

As with most performance situations, it was a case of taking all these many aspects of the work into consideration and trying to find a balance between them which worked and enabled me to communicate what I felt was beautiful and important in the work. I often find, this hangs in the balance between feel and accuracy. Feel being the ability to carry the weight of a piece from start to finish, portraying gesture and form over a larger course of time and the beautifully human nuance which this inherits. Accuracy being the resemblance which the final audible result has to that of the written score. There are a few moments where I feel inaccuracy proved more effective. Take bar 153 (05:50) for example. I find the messy jack noises to be much more fitting than the more rhythmically accurate ones at the beginning of the piece. 

Is that where the trashy lies? Somewhere balanced on the brink of failure…? 

The ingenuity of many of Romiltelli’s scores is in how simple they appear yet, in practice, what they demand is far more complex and requires a much higher level of sensitivity from performers. Considering that the work was written in 2002, I would even say that Romitelli significantly expanded the idiosyncratic identity of the electric guitar within contemporary music. Even today, many new contemporary works for the electric guitar utilise the same, or very closely related, techniques and/or extra musical objects. In closing, I’ve enjoyed delving deeper into the mind and practice of Romitelli through this work. As a listener I often found it difficult to get past the facade of gimmicky guitar licks which often over dominate the surface of this piece. However, as a performer it very quickly reveals itself as an immensely more detailed, nuanced and surprisingly vulnerable music.