for Harp & CD
Featuring Marshall McGuire - harp
Listen to
There Ain't No Harps In Hell, Angel !
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One of a set of pieces which integrate the spoken word, acoustic instruments, players with improvising abilities,
electronic instruments. These are pieces which pull no punches. What each piece has to say is done in a direct
and sometimes confronting way. They invoke the voice of the repressed, the underdog, the dispossessed.
These electro-acoustic pieces, or studio pieces, as I think of them, are related musically through the integration
of my own stylistic techniques with some aspects of more popular musics, (e.g. rock/techno instrumentation), and,
thematically through the socio-polital material (voice/language), giving the music its emotional thrust.
The Harp is close miked, and played to a CD of electronically produced sounds and samples - including a ¼ tone harp. The harp is essentially a diatonic instrument. That is, it is like the white notes on a piano, which can become 'black' but must be basically one or the other. So, part of the musical idea is for the normal harp and the ¼ tone harp to become integrated with one another, thus producing a new mega-harp. Rhythmically, the player must be quite accurate, as the ¼ tone harp often plays the notes in between the harpist's notes. This produces big, rich, fluid-like arpeggios, some edgy harmonies, and microtonal 'echoes' of the harpist's chords.
View this site in FRAMES - recommended !!
