Category Archives: music

‘only a fragment carries the mark of authenticity’ [Bertold Brecht]

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As of today i’ll be posting recordings from my archives. New, and not so new songs, or just simple fragments that I recorded over time, are posted here.
Mostly solo efforts, but also with my musical brother Luuk de Weert and
various guests and friends and even a band. Instant collage, electric chamber music, improvisation, songs , instrumentals, r&b, gospel, chanson-electronique
From Fi to Lo-Fi to No-Fi ….

all music and lyrics by Andre Hogeslag except where noted otherwise

Today’s release contains 4 songs

“DOWN THAT ROAD BEFORE”

Recorded by the Bopshop. Ferry van der Werff: Wurlitzer e.piano and Hammond organ; Luuk de Weert: drums; Mischa Boeren: double bass; Andre Hogeslag: el. guitar and vocals.
[listen to the beautiful detailed original organ playing by Ferry, in the best French and American tradition!]
Arranged by the Bopshop and recorded by Harold Jalving.

‘Ça ira’ [it’ll be fine]
[La ou ça ira, on sera mieux/ where it was, i shall be. J.L.Godard]

Theme song, entirely made in Garagaband!
[my take on j-pop]

‘FANTASIA for piano’
i like the tradition of the 15th Century idea of the fantasia with it’s roots in the art of improvisation. It seldom follows the textbook rules of any strict form.

‘LET LOVE TAKE OVER’

acoustic guitar, vocals and lloopp/ppooll

combining the chanson tradition [singer songwriter] with the world of electro-acoustic music: chanson-electronique!

JLG Designer of Meditations

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2Track of treated voice [FG] and organ [BG]
‘le Petit Soldat’ [Jean-Luc Godard] & Bach Choral
[use headphone for detailed listening]
electricsouvenir-recording

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, the trailer, ….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 ‘a Godard’ turned out to be the one.

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

‘aGodard’ = Part of a collection of Solo Pieces for Electric Guitar and EHX Freeze

MORTON FELDMAN & the Electric Guitar

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christian wolff

When Morton Feldman’s electric guitar piece for Christian Wolff was stolen from Wolff’s car in 1967 [the score was actually in the guitar case that was stolen], it was considered to be lost forever. All there was left was a raw sketch, found in the late 1990’s by Jogrim Erland, but still no-one knew how the original score looked like.

However in 2008 a radio recording was discovered of Wolff playing the Feldman composition ‘The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar’.

Recorded in the mid 60’s, with a very poor sound quality, it was the start of Seth Josel’s reconstruction of the score. The reconstruction of the Feldman sketch is on the left page, and the transcription of the Wolff audio-recording is on the right page.

So what to make of this? Is this the real thing? Or will it always be what it is, a reconstruction? We wanted it so badly! A piece by Feldman for our beloved instrument.

Listen for yourself! Here are three guitar players working with Seth Josel’s reconstruction of the score.

Gaku Yamada
Wiek Hijmans
Ruud Harte
A beautiful edition with lots of information, ilustrations and scores!

WORKPLACE #2

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Today, while working on a transcription for electric guitar of a Telemann ‘Fantasia’ [1735], i was thinking of another transcription i once made a long time ago of a piece by Orlando Gibbons [1583-1625],

The piece i’m referring to ‘Five Part In Nomine’ was scored for Wurlitzer Electric Piano, Vibraphone and Electric Guitar. A fine instrumentation!

This may be the right moment to post a transcription i made of a panel discussion that was video taped by Other Minds in 2010. https://archive.org/details/OMF_2010_03_04_c2_01

Charles Armirkhanian is discussing the 2nd String Quartet with composer Jurg Frey.

what strikes me so is this important role church music, psalms and hymns and chorales played and still play in music. This leads me to my own fascination with church music in general. From the Ecole de Notre Dame, to Orlando Gibbons, to Claude Goudimel, [the composer to which Jurg Frey might be referring to, when he speaks of his book of chorals], Goudimel the composer of the Genevan Psalter Book, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Goudimel], to Jurg Frey, to Morton Feldman ‘ if i want my music to demonstrate anything, it is that ‘nature and human nature are one’. Unlike Stockhausen, i don’t feel called upon to forcefully ‘mediate’ between the two. Stockhausen believes in Hegel; i believe in God. it is as simple as that’. [‘A life without Bach and Beethoven’ – Give my Regards to Eight Street]. The feeling is universal, at least in the context of western music, and of importance to me. I’m convinced that some knowledge of this subject will give you good insights of music in general.

So for now i’d like to end with the mentioning of Roscoe Holcomb, a Kentucky Mountain Music man with a strong faith.

Beautiful book/DVD/CD by John Cohen!

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