So, what have I been doing the last 5 years? Besides working on this new release, I made a few contributions to some top-notch electric guitar driven compilations (Axe – Various Artists, $100 Guitar Project – Various Artists), recently finished a commission for the NYC Guitar Orchestraand participated in various other musical activities. And although I didn’t perform live much, I played and taught a lot. All that while being a Dad to a 5 year old girl which is its own wonderful and challenging thing.
The initial plan was to release a full-length album of new music using the same instrumentation throughout: electric guitar, electric bass, virtual instruments (piano), percussion samples and voice samples (once again, courtesy of my wife, Kim) but while working on the album, I reached a point where I felt I had said enough. A short piece which I originally composed for the album didn’t make the cut, so it was left off. (The piece can be heard online: Yawp). Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in the album concept and this EP is the most consistent compared to my other releases. Why include more music for the sake of it?
This EP also has the least amount of guitar than any of my other albums, even though I still play lots of guitar and have thought about doing a solo guitar album for years now. Talk about a complicated relationship..
Ultimately it doesn’t matter how much guitar is in my music as the music itself matters the most. Truth.
In April 1984 at the age of 12, I picked up my father’s beat up acoustic guitar and set out how to learn how to play it. Up until I started guitar, I had dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Personally, I didn’t care for winning and losing, so I stopped playing organized baseball. Music seemed the way for me. I was passionate about learning and wanted to learn how to play guitar. At the very beginning, I took some informal “lessons” with a family friend, learned a few power chords and took off from there.
6 months into that, my uncle bought me my first electric guitar – an imitation Les Paul. I was so excited.
Then about a year later, I took 6 more months of lessons with another family friend (who was actually quite good) and then basically became self –taught. My youth was spent listening to hard rock, heavy metal and 80s shred. I practiced at least 4 hours a day. In my later teens I discovered jazz and fusion. This was a time before kids had a plethora of after-school activities to choose from. Would that have made a difference for me? All I know is that I lived to play guitar. I would often fall asleep playing it. It’s all I wanted to do.
I became one of those rock guitarists in my late teens who felt that I needed validation by learning classical guitar. There were many out there – longhaired metal heads plucking the nylon. (I didn’t have long hair though). So, right out of high school, I enrolled into the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music as a classical guitar major. After 2 years of studying classical guitar, I eventually switched focus and finished with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Composition.
I managed to get in the conservatory as a primarily self-taught rock musician. I didn’t have the type of music background many conservatory students had. My parents were hard working Italian immigrants. They would ask me to sing while playing and I could never do it seriously. So, I made fun of Italian style folk songs. I played only two chords (D and A7) and improvised lyrics in Italian and broken English.
(Now as a band/guitar teacher, I can “sing” and play at the same time fairly well. I would have never imagined that happening. Life is funny.)
I wanted to play fast. I wanted to make noise. I loved feedback. I wanted to learn as much as possible about it. And as much as I loved the guitar, I learned that I hated it too. I fantasized smashing it into pieces. It was the perfect vehicle for my angst and sometimes it still is. I’m just not a kid anymore.
Long story short; I went on to get a Master’s Degree in Music Composition. After traveling some winding creative roads and getting lost too, I became a composer and use lots of guitar in my music (I have 4 albums available).
30 years of guitar and I see myself as a composer first and foremost.
Read some of my other blog posts to learn more about me and to hear my music.
My first experience with drums and percussion in an electroacoustic piece was for a composition called “Kickstart” from my 2010 release, Mechanical Uprising. I have often referred to that piece as a composition for an “electroacoustic musique concrete avant rock band.” I’m still surprised it took me that long (about 11 years and 4 albums later) to get around to using drums and percussion in my own electronic music.
Now, I love it.
So, this past year I composed music focusing on a particular instrumentation of electric guitar, electric bass, piano, drums and various percussion. One composition, “Joyous Returns” also uses female voice samples (courtesy of my wife, Kim). I then composed a set of three pieces. (EDIT 6/8/15: originally posted all three, but took down two of them. EP with all three pieces will be released in late 2015)
The guitars were all performed by me and the piano music was composed by me. The drums and percussion sounds are samples from various sound libraries.
These compositions will all be included on my next album scheduled for release in……….
I’ve always had a fascination for electric guitar feedback. My first experiences go back to when I was around 13 –14 years old. After many hours of intense practice (all I did was practice from the ages of 12-17), dealing with frustration and sore fingertips, I would turn the amp up as loud as possible allowing the guitar to howl and scream. Then I discovered that I could manipulate the feedback by walking around the room and swirling the guitar around in the air. I also discovered that at certain spots in the room the feedback was very consistent and could get that long sustain to add to those certain held notes.
Here’s a link to my brand new piece utilizing electric guitar feedback, Fractured Sky (2012). The sounds in this piece come mostly from electric guitar with the addition of a few percussion samples. The painting above is by the British artist Richard Whadcock. Click the photo to check out his wonderful artwork.
Both recording sessions for these pieces involved recording electric guitar feedback at a very loud volume. For me these compositions are not only about the finished result, but about the process. A reliving of those youthful electric guitar feedback experiments and sculpting them into compositions. It’s the stuff that keeps me drawn to the electric guitar and makes me want to keep playing and wrenching sounds out of it.
Hope you like these pieces. I still have some feedback experimenting left to do..
I have some experience composing for voice having written and conducted (yes, you read right..conducted) two a cappella pieces – one for sextet (S, MS, A, T, BAR, B) and a piece for three sopranos. I also wrote a piece for soprano and string quartet a while back that I’ve never heard performed. I have been tempted to realize that piece, but it’s just not a priority now…I am still curious though.
The aforementioned compositions date back to late 1998 and 2002 and are quite different from my electroacoustic music since 2006.
So, I’m a big fan of voice in all contexts and I still enjoy listening to music that features voice. The first musical sounds I can distinctly remember are those of my father singing with an acoustic guitar.
Interestingly enough, with all my classical education, I’ve never been a big fan of classical opera. I can get into some Mozart and that’s about it.
Anyway, an important moment for me creatively was when I first introduced voice in my electroacoustic music. My composition, Karmicom (2005) is a sort of virtual duet of multitracked electric guitars with the voice of my wife, Kimberly Fiedelman. It is also the only piece where you can briefly hear my speaking voice at the very end and the only piece on my debut compilation, Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar, that includes another instrument outside of electric guitar and electric bass.
Listening back, I feel Karmicom was one of my more imaginative/unusual/humorous pieces. It stands out from my other work in that regard. Brief heavy guitar riffs with serene voices and mock opera bits. Prepared and bowed guitars mixed in with some heavy metal choke harmonics, etc., etc…And there is one section that consists of only multitracked voices. Looking at this piece objectively, I realize it is somewhat schizophrenic, but it represents a slightly different time and it still works for me.
I’ve known people who love this piece and some just don’t get it.. Of course, the audience for this type of music is relatively small, so most people are not going to get it as music alone. Anyway, this is a topic for another day.. I remember how one reviewer wrote how the piece started off great and then became just awful….:) The website with that review no longer exists.
Karmicom is an anagram for____________________. Only two people have ever figured it out (without me even asking too..)
Another piece I would like to talk about is the four movement, Renewal (can be heard on The Ominous Corner). This piece was composed in 2006 and features voice (once again, by my wife Kim). By this time I was working with sounds outside of guitar, so the sonic palette is larger..
Voice occurs throughout the whole piece. Renewal I (Introduction)opens with voice. The primary movements that feature voice would be Renewal II (Interlude) and Renewal IV (Finale). The text for mvt. II comes from two specific sources: a text written by me and random lines plucked from the horoscope section of a daily NYC newspaper (either the Daily News or The Post). In mvt. II, I was trying to depict the “chatterbox” state of the human mind with brief moments of clarity in texture and meaning. I cut up the various text and created new phrases by combining phrases from the two different sources – a kind of deconstruction. Mvt. IV consists of vocal themes already heard and presents them in a more joyful, playful, frenetic and sometimes contemplative light.
I thought it was good time to start a blog. So, welcome! I’ll be posting here from time to time.
It also happens to be my 40th birthday.
For those of you who do not know me: I am a guitarist and composer from Brooklyn, NY. I presently live in the Sunnyside section of Queens, NY with my wife and daughter.
I began playing guitar at the age of 12. My father played and sang a little. so there was always a guitar in the house. My formative years were spent learning rock and metal. To make a long story very short (for now), I then went on to study music seriously, studied classical guitar for 2 years and ultimately got a BM in Music Composition from Brooklyn College/CUNY and an MA in Music Composition from Queens College/CUNY. I’ve studied composition with Noah Creshevsky, Charles Dodge, Tania Leon, George Brunner, Thea Musgrave, and Henry Weinberg.
Since 1999, my compositional focus has dealt with the use of electric guitar in the genre of electroacoustic music.
My earlier electroacoustic stuff exclusively with guitars – music from 1999-2005 – focused on musique concrète works using the guitar more as a sound source. I wasn’t as concerned with playing the electric guitar conventionally as I was trying to coax different sound sounds out of it. This period culminated in a compilation released in June 2007, called Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar. One track on this album includes the use of female voice, Karmicom (courtesy of my wife, Kimberly Fiedelman).
After this release, I started composing music with other sounds in addition to electric guitar. I was thinking a bigger, more varied, denser, noisier, colorful, orchestral type of sound. Also, in addition to musique concrète works, I started writing music for “live” guitar and fixed playback. The Ominous Corner was released in September 2008. Pieces like Cityscape, The Ominous Corner and Renewal are examples of compositions with electric guitar and recorded playback. These compositions contain sounds ranging from processed simple waveforms, virtual instruments, female voice (my wife, Kim), samples, electric guitar and electric bass.
Here is video of a live performance of a piece for electric guitar and playback. Skimming the Surface (2007) is not available on any of my albums.
In June 2008, I also had the great pleasure of collaborating on an album with David Lee Myers (aka. Arcane Device) called Tesla at Coney Island.
My last album, Mechanical Uprising was released in July 2010. This album also consists of pieces not meant for live performance. Different from my previous music, the album opener Kickstart (for those of you who still care about track placement) includes my first piece with drum samples. After playing in rock bands in my youth, I found it funny that I would wait this long to use real drum sounds. I’ve called Kickstart a piece for “electroacoustic musique concrète virtual avant-rock band.” And speaking of firsts, Nocturne (the album closer) is my first solo electroacoustic work to use nylon string guitar. Whereas The Ominous Corner was more of a departure from my debut compilation with the inclusion of a “live” electric guitar part, expanded sonic pallette and bigger sound, Mechanical Uprising to me, is a culmination of my electroacoustic music with electric guitars written up to this point. Lately, I’ve spent some time wondering what else I would like to do in this genre.
Earlier this year, I did compose a track for the very cool $100 Guitar Project (an excerpt of my piece Red Cent can be heard here). It will be part of a double CD release due out sometime next year.
I’ve included my links to Bandcamp because my albums can be heard in their entirety there (with a few free downloads), but my music is available through all the usual online digital stores (iTunes, Amazon, Emusic, etc.). Actual CDs can be purchased through CD Baby:
As for a new solo album, I have started some work on it, but am thinking a different direction. Not sure what that direction will be yet, but when I find out, you all will be the first to know.
Marco Oppedisano 