Instrumental Quaalude

This Week

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:33:00 -0700

Instrumental Quaalude postings are now available at the Free Music Archive in 4 volumes. http://freemusicarchive.org/music/BenWildenhaus. Thank you. This blog has passed away.

Week Thirty-eight

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:52:00 -0700

Week Thirty-eight is a version of Riz Ortolani's Theme from Cannibal Holocaust. A regular live performance selection, a recent nod to this number by Swiftumz on Don't Trip necessitated a recorded entry. Performed on Wurlitzer 200a, voice, and sine-wave generator. (2 minutes, 33 seconds).

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Week Thirty-seven

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Fri, 5 Aug 2011 19:24:00 -0700

Week Thirty-seven is an arrangement of Badalamenti's "Laura Palmer's Theme" for the electric guitar. (3 minutes, 2 seconds).

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Week Thirty-six

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:57:00 -0700

Week Thirty-six is completely unnecessary edit of random bits of jam. Features sufis, babies, reciters, and beat happenings (2 minutes, 14 seconds).

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Week Thirty-five

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:53:00 -0800

Week Thirty-five is a hairy jam on 5 string red guitar with contact mic, loop, and small amplifier. (3 minutes, 42 seconds).

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Week Thirty-four

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:35:00 -0800

Week Thirty-four is a collaboration with the Pacific Northwest instrumentalist Jon Sampson. Jon performs bass over a field of electric guitar pulses, decaying and providing harmonic changes. (2 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Week Thirty-three

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:04:00 -0800

Week Thirty-three is an acoustic guitar lullaby-for-child degraded to various levels of fidelity by cassette recorders, resulting in the emergence of a hyper-compressed, unintentional melody. (2 minutes, 33 seconds).

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Week Thirty-two

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:53:00 -0700

Week Thirty-two is an improvisation on a finger-picking melody that is often played for the daughter. (4 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Non-week item

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Thu, 2 Sep 2010 19:59:00 -0700

This video promotes the upcoming cassette and album release of "Great Melodies From Around," 44-minutes of great melodies performed by Ben Wildenhaus.

Week Thirty-one

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:29:00 -0700

'Weeks' are now a constructed conception of time for this. In non-blog time, a baby is coming any week now.

Here, the red guitar is outfitted with a pickup made in Coos Bay, OR. It battles the usual SG minor chord improvisation. Sharp v. Round. (4 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Thirty

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:45:00 -0700

Limited notes by accordion and electric guitar organized. (2 minutes, 40 seconds).

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Week Twenty-nine

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:36:00 -0700

Tapes and bass guitar improvisation. Week Twenty-nine is in honor of the great Pacific Northwest. (3 minutes, 23 seconds).

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Week Twenty-eight

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:55:00 -0700

Improvisation on red guitar (4 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Week Twenty-seven

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:45:00 -0700

Piano plays a 4/4 chordal backing. Destructed sine waves ruin accordion melody. Bass enters to compliment the piano while the sine waves attempt to ruin everything. For Johanne Fück. (4 minutes, 12 seconds).

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Week Twenty-six

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:52:00 -0700

Week Twenty-six is layered guitar improvisations. The exploited difference here is between wet and dry guitar strings. Ab is the name of the game. (5 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Twenty-five

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:08:00 -0800

Week Twenty-five is an electric guitar improvisation over a rhythmic and tonal center established with a loop. F. F#. A melody emerges in minute 4. (5 minutes, 25 seconds).

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Week Twenty-four

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:53:00 -0800

This is thirty-five seconds of the upcoming 43 minute LP "Great Melodies From Around", to be released sometime in 2010. I made this brief sampler to account for the lack of recordings the past two weeks. Been hard at work (35 seconds).

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Week Twenty-three

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:21:00 -0800

Week Twenty-three is solo electric guitar. (2 minutes, 34 seconds).

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Week Twenty-two

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:53:00 -0800

A version of "RE: I Person I Knew", by Bill Evans. The song moves over a pedal C. Performed on SG. (2 minutes, 53 seconds).

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Week Twenty-one

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:01:00 -0800

Been thinking about what life is like in the Pacific Northwest. This is one rather claustrophobic envisioning of it. There are surely others. I suppose it might sound like Bill Orcutt and Dave Holland. (4 minutes, 40 seconds).

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Week Twenty

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sat, 9 Jan 2010 17:45:00 -0800

"Gnossiennes I - Lent" by Erik Satie. This week is a live performance featuring two electric guitars, one of which has been captured by a phrase sampler. In order for this recording to be five minutes, the last portion of the composition has been excluded. (5 minutes, 2 seconds).

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Week Nineteen

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 3 Jan 2010 16:35:00 -0800

Week Nineteen first oscillates between Dbm/Ab and Abm/E. In the bridge the chords Ebm7/Db, Gm, Db/Gb repeat before returning to the previous two chords. There is also a melody. Performed by SG. (5 minutes, 10 seconds)

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Week Eighteen

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:29:00 -0800

Week Eighteen is a melody fragment, performed on guitar and sine-square generator. Providing the context are two variations on alternating chords, performed by guitars made to sound like faux chimes. (4 minutes, 58 seconds).

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Week Seventeen

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Tue, 8 Dec 2009 19:45:00 -0800

Week Seventeen begins with slow Fender tremelo providing rhythm. Tonally, two guitars move through chords in syncopated opposition to the "one" of the 6/8 measures. A pedal steel melody follows the off kilter patterns supplied by the chordal movements. Throughout electric hum is manipulated. Performed on electric guitars and pedal steel. (2 minutes, 56 seconds).

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Week Sixteen

vonwildenhaus@gmail.com (B. Wildenhaus) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:20:00 -0800

Week Sixteen is a cover of "Mount Harissa" by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, although the portion I've excerpted is most likely the Duke's tune. The beautiful song which comprises the middle portion of the original composition sounds more like Strayhorn. This melody I've recorded serves as Mount Harissa's "oriental" bookends. The song is one part of their 1966 Far East Suite. Following the suite's motivic contour, this tune opens with an "oriental" sounding melody which then gives way to a typical American blues turnaround. Ellington and Strayhorn's success is that these two factions meld effortlessly into Ellingtonia throughout all of the suite's movements.

Here, I've given "Mount Harissa" the Ventures treatment - and I'd be surprised if the the Ventures hadn't already. Performed by SG, bass, Wurlitzer 200a, and dueling samples of the one and the only Leatherpants on drums (via live Party Favorites recordings). (2 minutes, 44 seconds).

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