THE EFFECTS OF POLYPHONIC TECHNOLOGY ON CONTEMPORARY ELECTRIC GUITAR PERFORMANCE Society for Musicology in Ireland Postgraduate Conference – 22 nd - 23 rd of January, 2010 Richard Graham School of Creative Arts Magee campus, University of Ulster Abstract This paper contends there are several causes of timbral homogeneity in contemporary electric guitar performance: 1) the acoustic origin of the instrument; 2) the traditional performance practice of timbral constancy, whereby “the player will have been schooled for many years to maintain timbre constancy in many musical situations” (Erickson 1975, p. 12); and 3) the monaural nature of the instrument, in terms of the single-feed audio output found in most electric guitar pickups. The second and third causes are arguably a direct result of the first. Such timbral homogeneity is problematic because it limits the electric guitar performers’ ability to utilise “timbre as a distinct, dynamic feature of music” (Fales 2005, p. 157). Instead, timbre is placed in the traditional role of nuance. As a form of remediation, this paper argues that modern polyphonic pickup technology provides an opportunity for timbral structure to become a more central part of contemporary electric guitar music by encouraging a practice whereby the performer consciously investigates perceived relationships between common pitch structures and timbral and spatial parametric change in a reflective manner in real-time music performance. The proposed approach maintains the potential to facilitate a new performance practice in contemporary electric guitar music whereby the performer utilises musical stimuli which exploit their similarities to environmental “regularities” (Bregman 1993, pp. 10-36). Hypothesis The author is extending his performance vocabulary through a musical practice which employs polyphonic pickup technology, allowing sonic attributes of each note on each string to be manipulated independently. Such a practice will allow the performer to observe parametric change between timbral and spatial configurations in relation to traditional scalar structures. The author intends to investigate timbral and spatial configurations in relation to simultaneous and sequential modal pitch structures which are commonplace in his current performance vocabulary. The use of independent audio streams from the various registers on the electric guitar will allow the performer to construct intricate music structures, potentially foregrounding timbre and spatial location cues beyond their more traditional role of ornament. Analysis of audio for pitch content, via conventional “Guitar-to-MIDI” conversion, enables audio feeds to be converted to MIDI data, whereby each audio event maintains the potential to be accompanied by concurrently triggered note sequences, effects processes, or generative note sequences preprogrammed by the performer. Such an approach to real-time signal processing (and musical construction) allows one to construct convoluted music structures beyond existing traditional solo performance practice. The author proposes such a performance practice will reduce the emphasis on timbral homogeneity in electric guitar performance. This will be discussed based on factors noted below.