Guitar Music
I recently finished a piece of music for 25-member, 5-voice amateur classical guitar orchestra, which'll be played in Maynooth on April 22nd. It will probably clock in at over 11 minutes, so it's arguably the most substantial piece I've written. I don't know if it'll work. What guitar music should sound like is still a huge mystery to me. Long, flowing, lyrical lines are out: there's no sustain. Huge dynamic contrasts are out: the guitar is too subtle an instrument with a range from about pianississimo to forte. I feel that the guitar is a completely different instrument from the standard classical-music instruments: it has nothing like the scope of the violin or piano or clarinet. So I feel that when I'm writing music for guitar, I need to start from scratch, and write music that owes nothing to the sounds of these instruments. Which is a lot to ask.
My previous experiments in composition and arrangement have been instructive, though, and I think this piece is better than anything I've written before. But it's still very close to minimalism, a genre which lends itself to the guitar very well indeed. I love minimalism, but I don't want to write it. I want more emotion, grander sweep. Maybe there's a bit of this in here. Certainly, it's more mature than anything I've written before, not as excitable or manic.
But the primary reason of this post is to share music that is good. This time, it's music by the Dublin Guitar Quartet. They always play minimalism, but they do it damn well. One of them bought me a beer once. Here is the MySpace page. I've just uploaded their first album (Deleted Pieces) to Grooveshark, so that should be up by this time tomorrow. I'll update this entry then.
Interestingly, one of the songs (Soundscapes over Landscapes) on that MySpace page is by an Irish post-rock band called The Redneck Manifesto. I loved the DGQ version so much I went and bought their album. It's rubbish. Oh well.
My previous experiments in composition and arrangement have been instructive, though, and I think this piece is better than anything I've written before. But it's still very close to minimalism, a genre which lends itself to the guitar very well indeed. I love minimalism, but I don't want to write it. I want more emotion, grander sweep. Maybe there's a bit of this in here. Certainly, it's more mature than anything I've written before, not as excitable or manic.
But the primary reason of this post is to share music that is good. This time, it's music by the Dublin Guitar Quartet. They always play minimalism, but they do it damn well. One of them bought me a beer once. Here is the MySpace page. I've just uploaded their first album (Deleted Pieces) to Grooveshark, so that should be up by this time tomorrow. I'll update this entry then.
Interestingly, one of the songs (Soundscapes over Landscapes) on that MySpace page is by an Irish post-rock band called The Redneck Manifesto. I loved the DGQ version so much I went and bought their album. It's rubbish. Oh well.