Song of the Earth (2023 - 2024)
Program notes
Like much of {teotwawki}’s music, “Song of the Earth” began with the idea to subvert the electric guitar’s typical dynamic profile. The dominant archetype of the electric guitar is that of a loud instrument, a totem for the rock, metal, punk genres and subgenres it has helped to spawn. The über-decibel doom metal band Sunn O))) is perhaps the terminal point of this logic.
I decided to explore the other side, the yin to metal’s yang: the quietest possible sounds. An immediate problem arose, the bane of sound engineers everywhere: the “hum” in audio signals resulting from amplifying the power grid’s current alternation of polarity at 60 cycles per second (in the Americas; 50 Hz in Europe). Assuming a performance in North America and multiple guitar amplifiers plugged into standard wall sockets, at least some 60-cycle hum will likely be audible.
Under normal circumstances, the "signal" of the music psycho-acoustically drowns out the omnipresent noise: we hear the notes playing over top, not the hum beneath. But when things get sufficiently quiet, when there is more negative space and silence, this hummmm can become more and more apparent. 60 Hz is almost exactly halfway between B♭1 and B1. That is, a quarter tone flatter than the B below the lowest E of a standard-tuned guitar (or a quarter-tone below the low B of a baritone guitar). Set against any pitch-based music in standard A=440 tuning, this B-quarter-flat sounds wrong, like noise in the sense of unwanted interference that reduces the clarity of the “signal.”
Being influenced by drone-based music, I decided to invert this noise/signal relationship by tuning the guitars to the hum, redeeming it by making it the central drone on which the rest of the music is built. The guitars are tuned to an open B5 tuning (all B’s and F♯’s), where B = 60 Hz.
Fans of Mahler may recognize Song of the Earth as the title of his final song cycle (Das Lied von der Erde). On the surface the long, inward-facing droning in my Song of the Earth bears little resemblance to Mahler’s prodigiously overflowing melodicism. My idea to appropriate this title is partly due to wordplay; the 60Hz hum becomes all the more audible in the presence of so-called electrical “ground-loops”; in French, electrical ground is “terre”; in the UK, “earth.” There is also a resonance with Mahler’s characterization that “a symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” Song of the Earth is a kind of one-movement symphony, though the “everything” it contains is closer to William Blake’s:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
— Kevin O’Neil, 2024
Composer
Year of composition
(2023 - 2024)
Instrumentation
electric guitar ensemble and synthesizer
Performances
Season | Date | Concert | Member(s) |
---|---|---|---|
2023-24 | INSTRUMENTS OF HAPPINESS // LA GUITARE, LA RELÈVE | Bradyworks / Instruments of Happiness |