Thanks. Henry's webmaster just sent me the same
link. This is great.
Kris
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 6:33
PM
Subject: RE: New Guitar/Cello/Koto
trio
Kristen:
All tracks of
Séance, featuring Henry Kaiser et al, are available for download at
emusic: http://www.emusic.com/album/10920/10920616.html
-----Original
Message----- From: Krispen
Hartung [mailto:khartung@cableone.net] Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 5:11
PM To:
Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: New Guitar/Cello/Koto
trio
I can't wait to talk about the new
ambient/experimental/free improv trio I'm playing in now. It is with two
women that I met, and who played at the Boise Experimental Music festival,
both music students/graduates. The instrumentation is me on guitar,
Gretchen on Koto (a really cool sounding Japanese instrument - http://home.san.rr.com/koto/instru.htm),
and Jesse on cello. We had our first rehearsal last week and our first
gig is on October 8.
The instrumentation and contrast of the
different instruments is really interesting, and I was wondering if anyone
else on the list had played with a koto player - because I'd like to hear what
has been done to leverage some ideas. I found one reference to such a
trio, with Henry Kaiser (guitar), Miya Masaoka (koto), and Danielle
DeGruttola (cello), and the CD is called Seance by Vex Records...but I can't
find the thing for sale anywere. Any clues? Gretchen lived
in Japan for 10 years and knows a fair amount about the music and
instrument. At our first jam session, I didn't do any looping, because I
wanted to just focus on the sound of my guitar and how it worked with the
cello and koto. I used my nylon string, but surprisingly, both of them
requested that I play my jazz electric next time, because they think the
contrast of acoustic instruments with my electric will be more unique.
Our basic approach for playing is that Gretchen can tune the Koto to
any scale....we start with a traditional Japanese harmonic structure (D Eb G A
Bb D) and play with that...and then after that point, she tunes it to various
modes (mixolydian, lydian, pentatonic, etc), and we play modally over a tonal
center, which is great for me with my jazz background. You can do some
great things with the koto, such as scraping the plectra over the strings,
bending the strings for other tones, etc. The fun one is where she tunes the
koto to the chromatic scale and we play atonally...the three of us end up
sounding like we're playing a 12 tone piece, though there are no rows or
permutations involved.
Next rehearsal I'll be bringing my notebook
system and looping. My plan is to loop some ambient textures of basic melodic
motifs based on the tuning of the koto..and then we'll improvise over
that...afterwhich I'll continue manipulating the loops to evolve with the
performance. It should be fun. I hope to record the Oct. 8
performance.
Kris
************************************************************************** Krispen
Hartung / Improvisational Looping Guitar www.krispenhartung.com /
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