I picked up a contact microphone today for my guitar. It sticks to any flat surface with this earthquake-glue type stuff and picks up the vibrations of that surface. The immediate reason for having it is that I've started playing with bitones on guitar, or the notes that are produced by plucking the string on the "backside" of your finger, in between your left hand and the headstock. By sliding in any direction, as the regular note gets lower the bitone gets higher, and vice versa. Also, because the higher frets are closer together, this means that the lower bitones have microtones in them, outside of the normally used twelve pitches. Beyond that, a hammer on when you can hear the bitone usually produces crazy sounds with the frequency interference between the two sides of the string.
So here's the idea. No one has written a serious piece for solo electric guitar (that doesn't sound cheesy as hell) besides Steve Mackey. This could be a good project for this year. Get two of the same amp (relatively small, due to being broke), plug the regular guitar output into one amp and the contact mic (bitone) output into the other. I tried this at the store and the outcome was pretty sweet, but writing a piece for that setup will take some serious time. As will mapping out some system of tonal functions for the bitones. I think I need to pay Mark Dresser a visit when I get back to San Diego, because he's done some similar stuff for contrabass.
I'll post anything I find out, and if I get some kind of cool setup together I'll put up a picture.
1 comment:
Hello Nikolai,
You need to check out Tom North, a baad guitarist in San Diego! He's the one from whom I got the idea of the double pick-up. He pans his stereo and does incredible stuff. He's not notated it, but he's a master.
When I go to look up his name on myspace I can't find him, but if you look at my myspace site and go to my friends, you'll find Tom North. Highly recommended.
Good luck
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