Pogus Prod.
Nick Didkovsky : Tube Mouth Bow String (2006)***°
-music for electric guitar, string quartet, computer, and live electronics-
Guitarist Nick Didkovsky contributed for years with his avant-jazzrock band Doctor Nerve, but he distinguishes himself as a new music composer as well, with his own project, and with other collaborations. Some time ago, when he was on tour with the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet he got the idea of exploring a multiple use of talk boxes for a complete band. The talk box was used as a guitar gimmick, and it works in direct contact with the mouth as a resonance chamber for the final sound effect which comes via a tube that is connected with the effects pedal for the instruments that are being played. It is called talkbox, because, when someone speaks it seems as if the instrument is speaking. Nick Didkovsky however prefered to use it especially as a direct (=real-time) mouth-activated audio-filter generator of sound. While at first thinking of a guitar based group, when talking to Ron Lawrence of Sirius String Quartet, they agreed it would sound more interesting to use this device in combination with a string quartet. It took a while to compose a piece for it, because he needed to write compatible software to model the system well. The model composed for it, allows it to control different variations at once, which the musicians have to measure and bring in tune. The composition notates firstly, which vowels or vocal behaviour on which moments they have to mouth (in the Banshee Talkbox), which notes they have to play on their instruments, and which position the (Whammy) foot pedal has to be changed with it (glissing between harmony settings an octave below and an octave above). There are different variations of also more improvised interaction starting from this idea of possibilities, of which the main piece is written down completely in detail.
“She closes her sister with heavy bones” was written for electric guitar with string quartet. This sound more like an improvisation on laid down electric guitar, combined with string quartet arrangements, and seems to have dealt with some control over resonance interactions, that seems to have been written down into the string composition. The guitar then adds strange sounds, and improvises with them on “machinecore”, a piece which I think is directly played on solo guitar and with the help of some computer. It is the most difficult piece, and is avant garde at first. The third and main piece is like a play with overtones and resonating sounds. These sounds are slightly reminiscent of Nurse With wound’s piece “Soliloquy for Lilith”, although the last (master)piece has a more directly and a multilayered organic logic in its own evolving waves. This new piece by Nick Didkovsky seems like it was accidentally or simultaneously attracted to the same area because it deals with harmonizing waves that come through into the live playing of the music, building up the composition as like in stringed DNA-energy so that it reaches the same tube with new and resonating sounds, which remain there as long as the elements keep on playing what they do, keeping certain resonances that remain in the air. The result has indeed something unearthly and it is also interesting that it is composed with different devices compared to the NWW piece, while keeping certain balances in the total of harmonies. The next piece, for string quartet and computer, “What Sheep Herd”, sounds like balancing from one to the next comparable variations of a stringed harmony set. This brings me more the kind of overtone pieces from Moondog in mind (which were published on his “Elpmass” album from 1991). The last piece, “Just a voice that bothered him” are like remains of some ideas, that after the synthesis pieces, show well from which elements some ideas were firstly build up. While they could have been fragmentary ideas that on its own didn’t lead to any bigger concept yet, after the main pieces, they more sound like quiet, peaceful moment of where the elements in some of the bigger concepts exist, calmly lay down to peace.
