It all started with the six. Andras Fekete and Matt Guess are three years into the annual Music for Massed Guitars, and have exponentially expanded what used to be a group of six talented guitarists in the Triangle into one of more than 50. Reporter Mballa Mendouga spoke to two of the event’s curators to discuss the vision behind the event. Music for Massed Guitars is open to all, at Motorco Music Hall on Saturday, Aug. 24 at 8pm. Tickets are $7.
Diversions: So tell me about Music for Massed guitars.
Matt Guess: So Andy and I got together in 2011 and we were in an experimental guitar group and they had 6 guitarists from the Triangle — Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh. We got together for this show called Dream Weapon. After the show Andy came up and said we could expand this. It was an improvisational show, that we did he said we should expand the number of guitarists and let’s conduct them and come up with a score. And a couple months later we had the first Triangle Rhysing and it was about 20 guitarists. That was how it happened.
Andras Fekete: We were at Nightlight in Chapel Hill. It was in 2011 in February and Matt had put together this show called Dream Weapon and we had six guitarists drawn from the local noise rock scene. It was a lot of fun and very noisey and unstructured and lots of fun. Afterwards we fell into this discussion about some possibilities to scale it up in such a way that we could have anywhere from four to 400 guitarists contribute and still come something that sounded not noisey or like this wall of noise but more like a symphony.
So what we came up with was a set of strategies that became the score for Triangle Rhysing. So we put it on that summer at Nightlight with about 22 guitarists and that was in 2011. In 2012 we did it again with about three dozen and this year we’re doing it with over 50 guitarists, and two cellists, and two drummers and three vocalists. We kind of figured that we’ll do it every summer and every year we’ll double the size. So next year we’ll have over 100 guitarists.
Dive: The proceeds of the tickets are going to 919 Noise. What is that?
AF: 919 Noise is an informal group that has been curating a style and experiment of music, that is known as noise rock in the Chapel Hill area or triangle for about ten years now. The founder of 919 Noise, his name is Bryce Eyman, and he’s a pretty interesting musician in his own right so he does solo stuff that’s kind of like damaged ambient noise. Very synth-heavy and samples. Matt and I actually met at a 919 Noise show.
919 Noise has an event — a showcase every month at Nightlight. They’ve been doing this for year now. It’s kind of an incubator and a crucible where people active in the noise genre get together. We figured we got a lot out of it so we’re having this as a benefit for Bryce because he really gets no additional credit. He does it all for free. So this is a way for us to give back to the scene.
Dive: This is the third one right? What’s going to be different about this one?
AF: In the past we’ve had, one drummer and a single cellist, and this time we’re having two cellists and they’re going to be up on stage, and for the very first time we’re going to have two drummers so they will have to coordinate with each other and they’re kind of facing each other and communicating while the music’s playing and then we’re going to have three talented vocalists who are going to be improvising at the same time. They’re going to be surrounding a single microphone so they can hear each other really well and have eye contact as they do the improvisation. So the vocal component is quite new.
We really need to get an idea for what the format that we have here is. It’s quite unique there are mass hard symphonies that are out there, but none of them approach the staging of it and the effect, quite this way, and it’s very dramatic when you’re there.
MG: Yes, we have a very unique way of orienting the ensemble. We divide our group of guitarists into four groups and we have them sit against the perimeter of the building and they all face towards the middle. So we have each guitarists sitting on a guitar amp. So we have these groups called north, south, east and west and that way it forms a big circle around the building. And that way we have the conductor in the middle where all the sound is and it just focuses in the center so it’s a very powerful effect to be in the middle. That’s why we recommend that the audience stand in the middle.
AF: We have some samples on Soundcloud. We’ve not focused on recording at all and the reason why. Describing this, and recordings of it are just inadequate. You really have to be there in the middle of the room surrounded by 50 guitar amplifiers aimed at your head when all hell breaks loose.
You would think that it’s very noisy. But in fact, we have all the guitarists play very cleanly. So the sound is very symphonic and very loud and very strong and very heraldic. It sounds like victory. And we use the stage as well so while the audience is in the middle of the room surrounded by all these guitarists that are all playing in a very coordinated fashion, the two drummers, the vocalist and the cellist are up on stage. So there are all sorts of things going on at once. The effect is amazing and any kind of recording that we’ve made — there’s no comparison.
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