An abbreviated version of this text was written for Ralph Gibson's Photo Exhibition "State Of the Axe"
In 1984 I bought a synthesizer and a sequencer for an awful lot of money. I programmed a bunch of random notes, to be played back at the slowest possible tempo. The sequencer triggered the FM synth to create these haunting soundscapes that me and my drummer fiercely played over it. A gig on a street fair ended early because someone called the police. However, I didn't become a synthesizer player, and the guitar wasn't endangered yet.
Music as I've known before was already in danger, though. Having spent more than 10 years in various jazz and rock groups, I became more interested in the various intros of the pieces we were playing, than the pieces themselves. We were gradually building an atmosphere of some sort, and I was able to hear incredible things. Now I wonder if I ever actually "heard" anything before that.
At a concert in 1989 I began to experiment seriously with electronics. Like many people I started out using bombast reverbs and looooong echoes. You just play a note, the delays fill up the space for the next couple of minutes, and you might as well go to the bar to get a beer until the sound dies out. I got over it quickly, especially since everybody else you're playing with is drowned out by the wall of sounds, and follows you to the bar.
A while later I bought a bunch of loop pedals and harmonizers, so I could create even more enormous walls of sound. They were shattering the rehearsal space that I had rented, much to the dismay of the other people who had business in the culture center. It didn't matter what exactly I was playing on the guitar, I probably could have done it by just plugging a microphone into my effect chain.
1994 - Mechanical Manipulations
Those effect pedals aren't very flexible anyway. They often do just one sound, or a little variation on it. But I'm interested in the relation between multiple sounds, placing them in order, or juxtaposing them to create a sonic progression. But for that, and for the people you're playing with, you need to be flexible and fast.
I figured the best way was to use all sorts of materials to agitate the strings, sticks, stones, screws, metals, motors and the like, because a slight change in the position of the screw can create something totally different. For many, many years I couldn't pass by a hardware store without checking out the materials, and the only thing I regret is that they don't let you in with a guitar and an amp to test everything.
Then I modified the instrument. Especially by using piezos situated on verious places on the guitar body the guitar became a fancy percussion instrument, and in those years my music was all about the pulse I created with an extensive set of mallets. Soon I was dreaming of the universal string board with multiple string sections, pickups all over the place, various devices mounted on the machine - until I pulled back again.
1998 - Endangered Guitar
That was 1998, when the name "Endangered" guitar was born - I was pushing the boundaries enough that the guitar lost its character. (Don't forget that I was also looking for a catchy title for my first solo CD, and since then I'm stuck with it). So you see where I'm going - I'm pushing the limits enough that I could get rid of the guitar, but then at some point I rescue it from extinction.
2000 - Max/MSP
In 1999 I started experimenting with a laptop, first with STEIM's LiSA, then with Max/MSP, to replace my pedals and mixers. And since I'm lazy it didn't take long to realize I could even do a gig just with a laptop. I think it took exactly that single gig to realize the computer keyboard doesn't care how hard you bang it. So I figured I should find a way to hook up my guitar to the computer. So the endangered guitar was again rescued from extinction.
Meanwhile my system is a hybrid of a guitar (still played with all sorts of things) and a software. The guitar is the only soundsource for my live sound processing, but the same sound is also used to control the software. In these years I learned how my playing affects the sounds that I created a moment before, and practicing and rewriting the software go constantly hand in hand. Now fast computers allow the use of comb/resonant filters, bit degradation, convolution and all sorts of things at the same time, until I get to the point where it is irrelevant what I feed into the system. It was very interesting for a while, but these days I make sure the guitar can be sonically identified as the instrument again (albeit an "endangered" one).
That's how it goes. Back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes I think I should go play in a wedding band, to give the guitar some rest. But I probably prefer the wildlife with its dangers over domesticated animals.
