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Soundboard Scholar No. 6: Cover Dec 2020

Soundboard Scholar No. 6: Cover

Soundboard Scholar

Our cover image is an adaptation by Colleen Gates of two images by Milton Mermikides of beat circles, discussed in his article "Monitored Freedom" (in this issue, pp. 36–54). In each circle, a typical range of swing values is marked up with rhythmic cents (in 5-cent intervals) alongside notated landmarks with “harmonic ratio” labels. Subjective descriptive terms are also included.

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Soundboard Scholar No. 6: Editor's Letter, Jonathan Leathwood Dec 2020

Soundboard Scholar No. 6: Editor's Letter, Jonathan Leathwood

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

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Sor's Guitar Music—A Fresh Start, Erik Stenstadvold Dec 2020

Sor's Guitar Music—A Fresh Start, Erik Stenstadvold

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This article addresses the considerations and decisions that underlie a new critical edition of Sor’s guitar music that is being prepared by the author. Sor’s oeuvre for guitar survives almost exclusively in early printed editions, not autograph manuscripts, so such a task begins with a reassessment, based on historical and text-critical criteria, of which editions he was likely to have been involved in himself and which we can therefore trust the most. As a result, this new edition partly uses different original sources as models than other modern editions. Meissonnier’s later versions of opp. 1–23 from 1826, claimed to be …

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Unraveling The Discussion Entre Les Carulistes Et Les Molinistes (Paris, 1828), Damián Martín-Gil Dec 2020

Unraveling The Discussion Entre Les Carulistes Et Les Molinistes (Paris, 1828), Damián Martín-Gil

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In 1828, the French guitarist Charles de Marescot published a small booklet called La Guitaromanie, a collection of pieces for the guitar. It includes a caricature, entitled Discussion entre les Carulistes et les Molinistes, in which two opposing bands of guitarists are engaged in a fierce fight. Although, several scholars have proposed a variety of possible motives for such a shocking image, this issue has never been subjected to close examination. The article analyses the veracity of the known theories, making for the first time a comparative study between the method books of both Ferdinando Carulli and Francesco …

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Monitored Freedom: Swing Rhythm In The Jazz Arrangements Of Roland Dyens, Milton Mermikides Dec 2020

Monitored Freedom: Swing Rhythm In The Jazz Arrangements Of Roland Dyens, Milton Mermikides

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This paper provides an analysis of jazz swing in the work of classical guitarist and composer Roland Dyens. Drawing on Dyens’s published and recorded arrangements of jazz standards, I study both his notation and his performance of swing, starting with a preliminary study of his collection Night and Day and proceeding to a detailed analysis of Nuages—his notated arrangement and four recorded performances. To provide context for Dyens’s stylistic referents, I analyze Django Reinhardt’s 1940 ensemble performance of Nuages. Throughout the discussion, I utilize digital audio analysis and models of microtiming to reveal Dyens’s sophisticated understanding and execution …

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Breaking The Matrix: Transcribing Bartók And Ligeti For The Guitar Using A New Capo System, Katalin Koltai Dec 2020

Breaking The Matrix: Transcribing Bartók And Ligeti For The Guitar Using A New Capo System, Katalin Koltai

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This paper demonstrates new transcriptions for the guitar of four piano pieces from the twentieth century: “The Night’s Music” from Bartók’s suite Out of Doors and Ligeti’s Musica ricercata, nos. 1, 2, and 7. The transcriptions deploy various newly invented single- and double-string magnet capos: I describe their design and, drawing on the work of De Souza, explain how their use transforms the affordances of the fretboard. In combination with scordaturas, the capos can be used to generate a series of radically altered open-string sets. Turning to the transcriptions of Bartók and Ligeti: by observing the pitch centers within …

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Julian Bream (1933–2020), Fábio Zanon Dec 2020

Julian Bream (1933–2020), Fábio Zanon

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No abstract provided.

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Timbre-Based Composition For The Guitar: A Non-Guitarist’S Approach To Mapping And Notation, Jason Noble, Steve Cowan Dec 2020

Timbre-Based Composition For The Guitar: A Non-Guitarist’S Approach To Mapping And Notation, Jason Noble, Steve Cowan

Soundboard Scholar

Composing for the guitar can be intimidating for non-guitarists, but their fresh perspectives can uncover new ways of thinking about music for the instrument. This paper discusses timbre-based composition, an approach to writing for guitar that may be more intuitive for non-guitarist composers than traditional polyphonic composition. The rich palette of timbres available on the guitar, including pitched and nonpitched sounds, is conceived as primary compositional material. Issues of notation and mapping are addressed, focusing on three categories of mappings: (i) physical mapping from notational symbols onto physical objects, such as parts of the guitar; (ii) analogical mapping from …