For 1-3 string instruments (+) and whammy pedal
2009
Duration ca. 6 min.
Study for String Instrument #1-3 is a trilogy exploring, among other things, choreographic aspects of string playing. All three pieces are notated as movement and #1 and #2 can be played on any string instrument or in any combination of string instruments (or on a number of other instruments meeting certain criteria). The development in the series is going from ‘the movement of the sound’ to ‘the sound of the movement’, increasing the role of the movements themselves, ending in Study #3 composed with the motto: at least as interesting for a deaf as for a blind person. Study #2 is for string instrument(s) and a so-called whammy pedal. The instrument is mainly making glissandi over two octaves, back and forth. The pedal is set to do the same thing; it can gradually transpose the sound of the instrument up two octaves. The first part of the piece is simply exploring the combinations of the glissandi and the transposing (enabling four octaves glissandi when the instruments and the pedal are going in the same direction or ‘neutralizing’ the glissandi when the instruments and the pedal are going against each other, making the note stay more or less in the same place), but later the whammy pedal is fed with more noisy sounds, resulting in more possibilities and surprising results. When fed with pure noise, the whammy pedal is forced to choose a random note to transpose. In the end of the piece, in a section marked molto cantabile, the pedal is ’tricked’ into constantly choosing new notes from the noise source, as if the pedal was inventing and singing its own melody ...