The Soul of the Electric Guitar’s Tone:
By way of introduction: in a number of seventeenth-century Dutch and foreign emblem books, a special print appears. A man can be seen sitting at a table tuning a lute. A second lute is lying on the table, with a straw on the strings. A book, a jacket and a hat are also on the table, while a dog sleeps underneath it. Behind him, a curtain is draped and there is a window on the left looking out onto a garden where two lovers are wandering around a rectangular pond surrounded by hedges. A pigeon house on a pole can be seen peeking out of the woods in the background.
‘Quid non sentit Amor’, from: Jacob Cats, Minnebeelden (1627)
Both the image and the text describe the tuning of a lute, the vibration of a string, and ultimately also pitch itself. When tuning each string on the lute, its counterpart on the instrument lying on the table will start vibrating in sympathy. The straw lying on the strings will then start to tremble without having been touched. Within the amorous context of the emblem, this is also a symbol for harmony: two hearts beating in tune will react to one another even without any direct contact–as proof of spiritual love. When they are on the same wavelength, they find a singular sound: the soul of the tone. So back to the electric guitar, then: the second edition of the OUTPUT Festival has taken the neologism of ‘the soul of the tone’ as its motto. While in the first edition OUTPUT was primarily concerned with introducing, underscoring and placing the electric guitar, the second edition redirects our attention. OUTPUT is covering a much broader scope in terms of repertoire, and putting a number of questions out about the instrumet itself. Why are so many different kinds of listeners moved by the sound of the electric guitar? Apparently, the sound seems to have soul, but where exactly in the tone is it to be found? The sound of the instrument can certainly be called unique and authentic, but how is that related to the individual players and composers making it? These are all questions which the Festival will grapple with in the concert programmes and the various lectures on the soul of the tone.
