The focus of this research has been, and continues to be, the development and expansion of an original approach and language on the 6-string electric bass that would be both robust and flexible enough to function in almost any role, regardless of genre or instrumentation. This PhD is the first scholarly investigation of the 6-string electric bass in the academic world. In addition to extensive technical information this research deals with larger more conceptual concerns to do with this young instrument as well as introducing a large body of original recorded work. During the four years of this research program I have developed new methodologies and approaches to practice as a means of exploring the research questions that drive the work. In addition to this I have performed and recorded with many internationally significant musicians and groups spanning many styles and aesthetic concerns. The 6-string electric bass is a very young instrument with enormous potential, relatively little history and the subject of no academic discourse to date. Although the 4-string electric bass and to a lesser extent the 5-string electric bass have some historic precedent particularly in many forms of popular music, the 6-string electric bass has only been made use of in a limited manner in various sub-genres of music. Although what I deal with here could be considered part of a number of sub-genres, these are not areas where this instrument in its short history so far has been made much use of at all, despite it being ideal for so many of these settings. At this point in my development I believe I have developed original and significant approaches to 6-string electric bass roles and that this is borne out in the video footage and audio recordings that make up my recorded submission. In this submission I present rigorous interrogation of the research questions that drive the investigation, provide detailed discussion of my practice-based research methodologies, demonstrate original techniques and approaches to performance, and offer a thorough analysis of the significance of the findings.

This is a critical study of music for electric guitars by composer-performer Rhys Chatham (b. 1952), work that distils and synthesises elements from various genres, primarily, minimalism and rock. I investigate the development, realisation, and import of these works, created between 1977 and 2006, in an analytical, biographical, and cultural account that examines unpublished performance directions, scores, and original interviews with this significant, yet under-explored artist and his collaborators. An immanent sublime aesthetic characterises Chatham’s formative experiences in downtown music, and I explain how this informs his composition, performance, and listening practices (including attendant issues of entrainment, frisson, and perceptualization). This reading is situated within major music traditions of the later twentieth century and at the forefront of a nexus of postmodern radical pluralism, operating across the borderline of the avant-garde and the popular. I use a range of research methods: aesthetics, cultural theory, interviews, musical analysis, music theory, and my own experience of performing several of these works. Part One maps Chatham’s development as a composer and performer through his engagement with modernist, serialist, electronic, minimalist, improvised, North Indian classical, popular, and rock music between 1952 to 1978, to interpret how he distilled key components of these experiences. Part Two outlines how he synthesised these elements in several non-notated works for the electric guitar, from 1977 to 1982, using idiosyncratic and inventive approaches to composition and performance. Part Three provides in-depth analyses of Chatham’s notated music for increasingly large ensembles of electric guitars from 1984 to 2006, to outline the development of his post-Cagean musical language, and interpret the wider import of these works. I argue that the interpenetration and reciprocity of musical elements in these works expand, and implode, pre-established forms of art and rock music. While this eludes ‘either/or’ classifications, per se, this is a particular kind of post-minimalism, with significant components of popular music, identifiable as part of a post-1945 culture that was distinguished by immanence, participation, and subjectivity.

There can be few early English composers more aware of their authorial persona than John Dowland. In an age obsessed with 'self-fashioning', self-publicist Dowland is conspicuous among early modern English composers for carefully manipulating an artistic persona. This was a persona that was particularly enlarged and distributed through the medium of early modem print. Disproportionately little is known about Dowland's life in comparison to other early modern English composers such as William Byrd. A historiographical picture of Dowland emerged in the last century overshadowed by debate and contestation regarding the ambiguous nature of his self-confessed Catholic sympathies and his seemingly 'melancholic' articulations of disappointment and frustration at a lack of advancement in the English court. Debate about Dowland's perceived melancholy disposition was further compounded by the high proportion of his musical output concerned with themes of melancholy, darkness and tears.

This practice-based research (driven by an initial improvisatory pluck on the opposite side of a fretted note, producing a microtone) focuses on the development of a new hybrid microtonal system derived from inverting the measurements of a 24-fret guitar fingerboard and superimposing them onto a normal fretboard, produced a 40-fret guitar with numerous additional microtonal intervals. This resulted in a composite scale structure consisting of a standard twelve-tone equal temperament (12-TET) system in addition to microtonal intervals of varied sizes. The structure of this fretboard produced a distinctive, performatively accessible, cluster of microtones at the beginning of the fretboard, contributing structural definition to the resultant evolving practice. The attractiveness of such an approach is that the idiomatic performance structures of the microtonal fretboard can be seen as contributing to the definition of the resulting scale’s performative potential. The research aims centre on how the interaction of 12-TET and unequal-division microtonal intervals can contribute to the development of a novel musical language (in the specific context of structured improvisations). The research also aims to explore how collaborative performance practices can contribute to the definition of this musical language. Key contexts for this work are provided by the work of a number of twentieth- century microtonalists, most notably Catillo, Haba and Partch. An exploration of Haba’s bicbrvmalic (two separate parallel chromatic structures with microtonal offsets) and ultrackromatic (integrated microtonal scales) models, alongside an awareness of various competing structural rationales within the present project’s composite fretboard model, yielded the descriptive term pofyrystem (after a literary practice in which different competing traditions exert influences upon a text within a different tradition) in relation to the interacting 12TET and microtonal dynamics. Newly-coined terms (micro+chromatic, analogous to Haba’s bichromatic, and itlinimicrocbmmatii) are advanced as part of the analysis of the performative outcomes.

The main focus of this submission is the composition portfolio which consists of four pieces, each composed several times over for different combinations of instruments. The purpose of this PhD composition portfolio is threefold. Firstly, it is to contribute to the expansion of the classical guitar repertoire. Secondly, it is to defy the limits imposed by the technical facilities of the physical instrument and bring novelty to its playability. Third and most importantly, it is to overcome the challenges of being a guitarist-composer. Due to a high degree of familiarity with the traditional guitar repertoire, and possessing intimate knowledge of the instrument, it is often difficult for me as a guitarist-composer to depart from habitual tendencies to compose truly innovative works for the instrument. I have thus created a compositional approach whereby I separated my role as a composer from my role as a guitarist in an attempt to overcome this challenge. I called it the ‘dual-role’ approach, comprising four key strategies that I devised which involves (1) borrowing ‘New Music’ practices to defy traditionalist guitar tendencies which are often conservative and insular; (2) adapting compositional materials to different instrumentations; and expanding on (3) the guitar technique as well as; (4) the guitar’s inventory of extended techniques. A detailed account of these strategies and how I utilised them to construct my portfolio have been relayed in the critical commentary. The supplementary dissertation, on the other hand, displays empirical research of a non-musical nature, offering personal interviews with thirteen accomplished living composers – both guitarists and non-guitarists – who have made significant contributions to the classical guitar repertoire. An introductory chapter precedes a full display of the interviews whereby each composer is introduced in turn, highlighting their relationship with, and significant contributions to the guitar. An overview of the topics that were covered in the interviews, as well as an outline of the themes that emerged from the analysis have also been supplied. A discussion of how the findings contribute to a better understanding of how to write successfully for the guitar and furthering the guitar repertoire concludes the chapter. Several of the themes coincide with my own devised approach that could help guitarist-composers avoid conventional and predictable styles of writing. This therefore forms the most important contribution that this PhD portfolio can offer: providing recommendations that combine tried and tested strategies with the collective knowledge of significant guitar composers to assist future guitarist-composers avoid the habitual pitfalls when writing for the guitar.

This thesis presents an in-depth analysis of selected electric guitar performance techniques and technologies, including the power chord, the wah-wah pedal and finger tapping. Employing discourse analysis, the purpose of the thesis is to identify and understand themes within a wide range of written source material pertaining to the electric guitar. I analyse primarily Anglo-American originating, English-language sources that discuss these techniques and technologies, including archival and online materials, popular and trade publications, academic writing and my own participant interviews. From my analysis, I identify a number of themes that are present within written discourse pertaining to electric guitar performance techniques and technologies, and which also cut across them. The first three main chapters consider three particular aspects of electric guitar discourse. In Chapter 2, I explore the existence of clear invention and discovery narratives for each of the three performance techniques considered in the thesis, concluding with a general list of features that appear to promote the narratives’ continuity and prominence. In Chapter 3, I look at the contemporary meaning of virtuosity and the electric guitar, suggesting that ascriptions of virtuosity are closely linked with the assumptions that underpin aesthetic preference. In Chapter 4, I examine the meanings and attitudes that are apparent in discourse relating to new electric guitar technology, demonstrating that there is a clear yet inconsistent binary between acceptance and rejection of technological change. In Chapters 5 and 6, I theorise more generally about the electric guitar, situating a range of relevant written discourse within theories of late 20th and 21st Century Neoliberalism. I suggest that many of the values and attitudes I identify within electric guitar discourse reflect those of neoliberalism, particularly with respect to the shared value attached to authenticity, individuality, innovation and a willingness to engage with the marketplace.

This thesis evaluates the technological developments of the nineteenth-century guitar that provided the basis for the emergence of the steel-strung instrument. It investigates changing use, cultural significance, and shifts in social association during this period. It maps and characterises Georg Staufer’s achievement in Vienna, and traces the progress of his innovations through the work of his immediate successors and of those European guitar makers who migrated to North America, whose designs heralded the emergence of the steel-string guitar. It assesses Staufer’s developments, in patents, catalogues and other primary documents, and compares those of his extant guitars, including examples with extra bass strings, which are accessible in museum and private collections. It asks how crucial changes in stringing (number of strings, tension, and material), c1880-c1920, led to profound but hitherto little-studied changes in sound and use; and by examining representation in press reviews and other reception evidence from Vienna and America, it assesses how the societal standing, signification and social associations of the guitar shifted, and demonstrates the basis of this in a complex web of technological and social change in the nineteenth century.

The contribution to knowledge, and the core of the research, is a tonal foundation based on glissandi using compositional techniques derived from synergy of glissandi, microtonality, and isorhythm. The techniques are performed on specially constructed guitars in 18, 24, 30, and 36 tet (tone equal temperament). Guitar based musical artefacts demonstrating some possible techniques are arranged on two compact discs: CD1 ‘Experimental Miniatures’ and CD2 ‘After Twelve’.

This thesis examines the rise of the electric guitar in the United States – arguably the most iconic and successful musical instrument of the 20th century – and the role of George Beauchamp in its invention and development. It focuses on Beauchamp's invention of the electromagnetic pickup, which is the component that makes an electric guitar an electric guitar. The research is based on examination of surviving instruments as well as archival research. An extensive contextual background is given regarding the historical development of electrical musical instruments in general and electric and electrified stringed instruments in particular. The instruments manufactured by Beauchamp’s company, the Electro String Instrument Corporation are discussed as well as difficulties and litigation Beauchamp and his company were faced with while trying to bring the instruments to market. The thesis focuses on the period between the first electrification of a fretted string instrument in 1890, and the conclusion of “the Miessner matter” (a period of prolonged threatened legal action against Electro String and other electric guitar manufacturers) in 1939. The thesis also considers competing pickup systems that emerged in the wake of Beauchamp's invention.

This thesis addresses interpretative issues arising from notated music, particularly recent guitar music typifying progressive notational and aesthetic trends, from a perspective based on the concepts of mimesis and gesture. Drawing on Adorno’s theory of musical reproduction, scholarship on musical gesture and recent models of performers’ relationship to notation, I propose interpretative strategies aiming at the vindication of the role of the body in the discussion of musical works, while also examining the performing conventions challenged by recent developments in guitar notation. Artistic practice is fundamental to this thesis as it accounts for the exploration of various interpretative strategies and choices derived from the application of the aforementioned concepts. An accompanying folio of videos and recordings documents the impact of these theoretical concepts upon my performing practice. The starting point is a discussion of the performing issues of Brian Ferneyhough’s Kurze Schatten II, a peak of complexity in the guitar literature, and the relationship between musical gesture and the metaphorical domains to which this work alludes. Subsequently, the interpretative strategies proposed here are applied to aesthetic models differing from that of Ferneyhough as well as to music appealing to multi-parametric notation – here considered as a strand deriving from Ferneyhough’s aesthetics – requiring a paradigm shift in its interpretative approach.