Jack Jones
Metal Machine Music II
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In 2023, under the guidance and mentorship of Dr. Mira Benjamin and Dr. Scott McLaughlin (for which I am eternally grateful), I embarked on a composition project, in response to Lou Reed’s iconic (if slightly pilloried) 1975 album, Metal Machine Music (RCA). Metal Machine Music II, a work for electro-acoustic feedback loops and trumpet, was the result.
In MMM, Reed leaned guitars up against amplifiers, turned them up, and waited for the feedback to scream, adding melody and sonic layering to manipulate the results. Reed’s desire to use feedback in a composition harked back to his years in The Velvet Underground who in the words of Phil Morris ‘were the first group to use controlled feedback and distortion and used it like another instrument all together’. Cathy van Eck puts it another way, by describing the use of feedback ’as a sound-generating tool’.
By looking at Reed’s processes and aims when composing MMM, and discovering other works for feedback instruments, most notably, Scott McLaughlin’s Surfaces of Emergence, Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room and Kusum Normoyle’s Dark Mofo, I was emboldened to explore some of those processes and contingencies needed to compose a piece for feedback.
It was in the examination of McLaughlin’s work Surfaces of Emergence, that I garnered a clear understanding of the importance of embodiment, material agency and movement that went on to crystalise a vision of an electronic composition for trumpet.
The trumpet lacks the electrical energy and sympathetic vibration of an electric guitar and its strings, so it was imperative to attach an electrical disruptor to violate the normal tone-production of the trumpet. By using a DPA clip-on microphone and Roland Guitar amp via a small mixer, a feedback loop would appear, which could then be manipulated and responded to via movement of the body, direction of the trumpet and distance between the microphone and amp.
When introducing the sound of the trumpet, a split-tone effect is created, whilst the feedback tone and trumpet tone battle each other for dominance. By playing the trumpet slightly louder, the feedback neutralises. Play the trumpet more quietly and a larsen tone will be the more authoritative voice.
The composition material itself remains indeterminate, and there is an expectation on the performer to use improvisatory skills to respond, react and provide shapes to the feedback loop and its relationship with the live trumpet.
Please do not reproduce any of these recordings without permission. For more information and enquiries about live performance of Metal Machine Music II, please reach out via the Contact page.