Glenn Branca: Interview with John Howell

NO~ V A guitar tuned in three octaves-the two bottom strings are tuned to a low E note, the two middle strings are tuned to an octave higher than that, and the high strings are another octave higher. That's the tuning I've used the most. It's the one I used first with InstrumentalforSix Guitars and all the pieces I wrote in 1979. Anduwhat are sfed ireguitars:? Guitars strung with steel wire instead ofregular guiar strings. Why use m? The harmonic blend is different due to the fact that they have no definite pitch. There's a wider variety of tone colors and the harmonic series is much richer. 5 ten out a piece? Yes. There's a pitch that's dominant, but not as dominant as a factory-made string. And unison guitaris every string tuned to the same note? Yeah. So the soprano guitar is six high strings all tuned to a high E, the alto guitar is tuned to a B, the tenor is six middle strings all tuned to an E an octave lower than the soprano, the baritone guitar is six low strings all tuned to a low E note. Basically it's an octave guitar broken down into three or four separate guitars. For most of these tunings there's a different fingering. What happens when you use a different fingering is that you start thinking differently about the instrument. You come up with a lot of sounds you wouldn't normally get if you always used the same tuning. When I was thirteen or fourteen I used to listen to Gabor Szabo. He would throw in little atonalities and play "off' rhythms. I read an interview with him where he said he spent a lot of time practicing and thinking about playing the guitar but when he actually got into a concert situation, he tried to forget everything he'd learned and just play. That's similar to what happens when you change the tunings because a lot of what you've learned about how to play the guitar no longer applies. Bayou do learn to ptay in another way. Yes but it keeps you in a constant state of change. In the past the tuning always came first. I'd get an idea for a tuning , then later an idea for a piece that could work better with this tuning than any of the others. But recently I've begun to write tunings almost as pieces in themselves where the tuning determined the specific nature of the piece. It's become totally integrated into the compositional process. The last five or six pieces have all had a tuning or combination of tunings unique to that piece. Do these different tuningsand stringingsgiveyou surprises after-you've writ6 I can write down what I want to happen and be sure that's what's actually going to happen when I've worked with a tuning for a while. But I don't always want to know what it's going to sound like. The idea is to cause a situation where something new can come up. I try to let the music invent itself. How do you decide which one of your musical ideasyou want to develop? By the ones I'm drawn to. I think most people have a basic sensibility that can dictate the choice of ideas if you're willing to wait. I try to realize the music as closely as possible to the initial inspiration and not let myself get off onto little tributaries. The idea is to get to that immediacy, stay on it, and let it dream itself. How doyou tell when you're on the right road and not off on a detour? When I know what the motivation is. The tributary thing in music is sitting around and playing with riffs. When I'm getting close to the core of what I want to project it's more about ideas, not technical musical games but a kind of primitive emotional structure . Have you studied musicformally? No. Can you read music? No. Well, I learned to read music when I was fifteen. My mother...