Tag Archives: EHX Freeze

JLG Designer of Meditations

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USE HEADPHONES FOR THE BEST DETAILED LISTENING EXPERIENCE!
A lot of the music is soft, in terms of loudness. This is an essential part of the music.

2Track of treated voice [FG] and organ [BG]
‘le Petit Soldat’ [Jean-Luc Godard] & Bach Choral

[use headphone for detailed listening]
electricsouvenir-recording

Silence Sequence:
‘i’m trying to hold onto my own thoughts.
What about words? Where do our words come from?
Maybe men talk incessantly, as if searching for gold..
in their quest for the truth.But instead of digging in riverbeds,
they dig deep in their thoughts. They cast aside all the worthless words.
And they end up with just one. One single golden word…silence.’
[Jean-Luc Godard ‘le Petit Soldat’]

Most people specialise in one thing, and sometimes become a genius specialist. Designing cars, writing books, making money, making films, making war, philosophise, designing chairs, making peace, composing, the list is as long as there are people specialising in one thing.

Some people specialise in 2 or 3 things, sometimes completely different things, sometimes combinations.

JLG concentrates on different design tools that will fit his meditations at hand. This is the JLG that came into my life while being a teenager. And all along he’s been giving me tools to improve myself.

What has this to do with FILM? Is JLG a filmmaker? I say, he is a designer of MEDITATIONS. But JLG has something to offer for all of us. He is a homo universalis!

sound meditation on ‘Alphaville’ [ Jean Luc Godard ]
electric guitar & Max/PPOOLL
electricsouvenir-recording

This meditation-maker will take you on an endless tour, showing you editing, graphic design, the art of color, sound-art, collage, politics, history, the art of motion design, films for the ear, trailers, ….
His meditations are confronting, puzzling, provoking improvisations, sometimes in the form of a movie or a documentary or a mix of both, but mostly they are essays using son+image.

Through the years I’m making my conversations with JLG, there’s always a moment in time where I feel inspired to give him some credit. Like a title! So when I was composing some music for electric guitar and the EHX FREEZE, I knew that one of them would be a ‘salut’ and indeed ‘ à Godard ‘ turned out to be the one.

simple testrecording with an old iPhone
electric guitar & EHX Freeze
electricsouvenir-recording

‘ à Godard ‘ = Part of a collection of Solo Pieces for Electric Guitar and EHX Freeze

Black Book 2015-2019

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inside the Black Book 2015-2019

system diagrams, modulair thinking, composition, notation

SIMPLE SELF GENERATING SYSTEM
STILL LIFE / JEAN LUC GODARD
SKETCH WITH LINE6 DL4 / EHX FREEZE / EHX CATHEDRAL
MUSIC ECO SYSTEM PLAYING & RECORDING
LLOOPP/PPOOLL ENVIRONMENT
E.G.O. ELCTRIC GUITAR ORGAN
SKETCH FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR / EHX FREEZE

E.G.O.

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the Electric Guitar Organ [EGO]

Where does it come from and what does it do?
in short:

the EGO is an instrument consisting of an electric guitar and some pedals with a special routing.
this special routing makes it into a breathing organic instrument, like a harmonium.
[to see and to make this routing yourself look at the ‘system diagram psd’]

where does it come from?

ever since i began playing the electric guitar i felt that the sound reminded me of an organ sound.
I felt deeply attracted to this sound, to me it was pure sound of great quality.
i never questioned this but from time to time i wrote some notes about it in sketchbooks or heard music on records where the two instruments [electric guitar and organ/ harmonium] were used.
Between 2008 and 2014 i was, together with Luuk de Weert, doing a project concentrating on electro acoustic music which gave me new ideas about sound[s], Later on i got interested in making these sounds in the ‘real world’. [from laptop to analog instruments]
Modulair thinking had entered my musical world.


But it was only until i began to study the music of Morton Feldman that my quest for the electric organ sound could really begin. Bellows and breathing:
the main thing is breath, breathing. this concept is vital. 
Listening to some Feldman compositions [Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello; Piano and StringQuartet] i noticed the way the strings moved, like a bellow. 
I realized that the foundation of this electric guitar organ might be found in this breathing organism. But how to translate this concept to the guitar? And here my modulair thinking helped me out. It might have to do with routing.
I started experimenting  with some pedals and slowly slowly my guitar started to breathe.
The solution [to this point] that is most satisfying consists of a Freeze sound retainer and a volume pedal.
The routing was the most challenging part, but once found is extremely simple.
You just take the volume pedal away from its traditional place at the start of a chain and bring it to the end.

As you can see in the system diagram you need 2 Freeze sustainer pedals and 3 Volume pedals for best results. So you always need one Volume pedal extra [the one you use to get a controlled signal out of your guitar].

So this is all about SOUND, the realization of a soundwish.

How to use this sound, in composition, is for another story.

andré hogeslag/ sijme storm

INSPIRATION

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notes from my sketchbook

texts, drawings, notations, technical stuff are all from my sketchbooks

12 june 2019

from my wish to play soft, abstract and harmonious sounds came the energy and motivation to start to think about chamber music and eventually to write music for chamber music ensemble.
Electric Chamber Music, because at the center of this writing is the electric guitar. so far i’ve written some 25 pieces in the last year. Solo pieces, duets, trio’s, quartets, and lately i’m working towards combinations with woodwind instruments [clarinet, flute] and percussion.
besides thinking and writing the music i wanted to test the written material. an Ensemble would be perfect for this musical journey.
my great great grandfathers name was Sijme Storm, he was the gardener of ‘Kasteel Soelen’ / ‘Soelen Castle’ in the 19th Century. Enough reason for me to name the Ensemble after him.

my main inspiration for the project: – Ecole de Notre-Dame, – Morton Feldman, – Jürg Frey.

André Hogeslag/ Sijme Storm 2019