Lois V Vierk

for five electric guitars

This piece is for 5 electric guitars. The symbol "" means five, and is pronounced "go" in Japanese. Guitars strings are all tuned to E and microtonal variants of E. I think of the 5 guitars as acting together to form one massive instrument.

Go Guitars is concerned with sound, with expression, and with musical structure. It begins with relatively simple musical materials--strums, repeated pitches, and pulled string glissandi. These sounds are continuously developed in slow unfolding patterns. The sounds and phrases become more complex, finally developing into dynamic slide glissandi on all 6 strings, covering the entire range of the instrument.

This work utilizes principles of what I call “exponential structure”, in which time and rates of change of musical materials are governed by application of exponential factors. The piece builds in intensity, moving from a high volume opening to a frenzied finale.

I composed Go Guitars in Los Angeles in 1981 for John Scnheider. A CD of this piece performed by David Seidel is available on XI Records.

Click here to view the score.