My realization of Michael Pisaro's "an unrhymed chord" is available now from Confront/Sound 323.
"The score for Michael Pisaro's beautiful and haunting 'an unrhymed chord' is basically a few instructions and time constraints. The performer can make any sound they like, sustained for between one and fifteen minutes in each thirty minute half of the piece, and placed anywhere they choose. The longer the duration of the sound, the lower the amplitude it is played. Simple, right? After immersing myself in both Greg Stuart's version for percussion instruments and Joseph Kudirka's electronic version, I started thinking about how this piece might work for guitar. I wanted to remain as organically acoustic as possible while at the same time fulfilling the score's requirements, allowing some sounds to sustain up to fifteen minutes. Using only an acoustic archtop guitar, a microphone and various techniques for exciting the strings, this realization took shape. While some of the sounds created don't really sound like a guitar, I did try and let the wood of the instrument come through and used some traditional plucked and picked notes to retain the traditional character of the instrument."
