Duality
From Jon Mueller
As some know, I was obsessed with the guitar when I was young. From the time I was about 6 or 7 (which would have been around 1977), my dream was to be a guitarist in a rock band. A few years later, I got a guitar and practice amp from my uncle who wasn’t using them anymore. One day, I went to turn it on to make some sound and act like I was playing it (I had no idea how to). The guitar lay on the ground and I stepped away briefly to do something else. When I returned to it, I heard a strange hum, but more surprising, I could see the lower strings of the guitar vibrating very quickly. As the blur of the strings grew more apparent, so did the volume of the hum increase. This was an absolute marvel to me. At the time, I had no idea what was going on.
I began to lightly touch the strings, which stopped or otherwise affected the hum. I took out a bottleneck and moved it along the neck, occasionally stopping to let the hum return. While at the time, I didn’t consider this as “playing the guitar” or anything musical, it was pure magic, and that experience has stuck with me and my interest in sound ever since.
Around 2007, I began focusing on extreme repetition, now with drums, which brought me squarely back to that purely magical feeling and wonder of that guitar hum experience. The sounds generated seemed to take on their own life, creating clusters and tones that I felt little responsibility for. It often seemed that both the audience and myself were witnesses to something beyond my doing, and I’ve held on to this approach since.
Later, I studied Classical Indian Singing with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. I had no intentions of even scraping the surface of this noble practice, but La Monte and Marian suggested that I would leave with information that could help in a variety of other areas, and they were right.
During one lesson, La Monte and I were going over a particular line from a raga and he kept having me re-sing it. He’d sing and I’d copy, or so I thought, but I wasn’t getting it right. At one point, I looked at Marian as sort of a way to question if she too was hearing that I was off. It sounded exactly on to me. She paused and said, “This is the line (then sang it). Here is what you are singing (then sang that).” Listening to her, I was stunned that there was indeed a difference. It was very close, but different. To them, it was the lifetime of Western influence that is baked into my musical understanding that makes it challenging to move tones to other areas. Momentary struggles aside, this idea opened the path that ‘Duality’ is part of.
Striking a perfectly tuned drum creates a particular tone, yet even then, that tone can change character when you strike different areas of the drum head. But much more mystery becomes possible when the head isn’t properly tuned. Then, the entire area of the drum head becomes a generator for a complex series of tones. One tone can be captured by striking one spot repeatedly, but striking even a half an inch away can create a completely different sound and feel. Once generated, they work in and out of harmony within the frequencies that bounce around the room, and over time, the strikes become almost secondary in focus, creating the same sense of mystery and wonder that the humming guitar did for me so many years ago.
‘Duality’ signifies drum and player, or two drums, or strikes and tones, but ultimately, what seems to be happening, and what is happening.
credits
released November 1, 2024
Recorded on May 15, 2024 at Silo City, Buffalo, NY by David Bailey. This performance was presented by Hallwalls.
Mixed by Jon Mueller. Mastered by Lawrence English.
Thanks to David Bailey, Steve Baczkowski, Lawrence English, fra/ctured string quartet and Duende for helping make this recording such a memorable experience.