Experimental Rock or Avant-garde Rock
A type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the avant garde genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common music composition and performance technique. Some of the more common techniques in experimental music include:- Extended techniques: Any of a number of methods of performing with voice or a musical instrument that are unique, innovative, and sometimes regarded as improper.
- "Prepared" instruments—ordinary instruments modified in their tuning or sound-producing characteristics. For example, guitar strings can have a weight attached at a certain point, changing their harmonic characteristics (Keith Rowe is one musician to have experimented with such prepared guitar techniques). Cage's prepared piano was one of the first such instruments. A different form is not hanging objects on the strings, but divide the string in two with a third bridge and play the inverse side, causing resonating bell-like harmonic tones at the pick-up side.
- Unconventional guitar playing techniques—for example, strings on a piano can be manipulated directly instead of being played the orthodox, keyboard-based way (an innovation of Henry Cowell's known as "string piano"), a dozen or more piano keys may be depressed simultaneously with the forearm to produce a tone cluster (another technique popularized by Cowell), or the tuning pegs on a guitar can be rotated while a note sounds (called a "tuner glissando").
- Extended vocal techniques—any vocalized sounds that are not normally utiliized in classical or popular music, such as moaning, howling, vocal fry, overtone singing, screaming, death growls, or making a clicking noise. Artists such as Cathy Berberian, Roy Hart, Meredith Monk, Michael Vetter, and Björk. Berio's Sequenza III for female voice (1965) and Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) utilize many of these techniques, along with other rock artists.
- Incorporation of instruments, tunings, rhythms or scales from non-Western music traditions.
- Use of sound noise sources other than conventional music instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
- Playing with deliberate disregard for the ordinary musical controls (pitch, duration, volume).
- Use of graphic notation, non-conventional written/graphic 'instructions' actively interpreted by the performer(s). This practice continued through composers/artists such as La Monte Young, George Brecht, George Crumb, Annea Lockwood, Yoko Ono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.
- Creating experimental musical instruments for enhancing the timbre of compositions and exploring new techniques or possibilities. Artists such as Harry Partch, Luigi Russolo, Bradford Reed, Iner Souster, Neptune, Hans Reichel.
