Redefining Contemporary Guitar Performance Practice through Spherical Amplification via S.T.OOGE

The use of amplification technologies is an integral part of contemporary guitar practice, given the dynamic limitations of the classical guitar and the inherent nature of the electric guitar. However, amplification or reinforcement strategies via traditional loudspeakers pose significant musical challenges, given the perceptual incompatibility between acoustic and electroacoustic sound sources. Implementing spherical amplification through outward-radiating spherical loudspeaker arrays (such as S.T.OOGE) in instrumental practice would allow overcoming these issues, opening up unprecedented musical possibilities.

In my role as a guitarist and performer, I believe that the allure of musical practice lies in the non-repetitiveness of the bodily experience of listening, in the multiplicity of possible listenings embedded in the unique shared space of the live performance. This is what constitutes, in my opinion, the immanent content of the living sound: the openness to the multiple possibilities that only its irreducible being as a body allows. From these assumptions comes the aesthetic need for sound as a corporeal entity on which my artistic research is founded.

If we think of an acoustic phenomenon in these terms, what defines its qualities is the way it extends in the space in which it is immersed: its spatial form. Manipulating the timbre, intensity, attack, projection, or any other parameter of sound means manipulating its spatial behavior, its form. It could be said that classical instrumental interpretative practice is based on the performer's ability to give body to the sound, molding its form as needed. However, this lively, physical dimension of sound gets lost in the relationship with the loudspeaker. Traditional amplification or reinforcement strategies are unable to produce or reproduce the complexity of acoustic phenomena, characterized by directivity-dependent parameters. Hence, the perceptual mismatch between the two, the loss of the bodily experience of live listening, and the lack of fundamental prerequisites for the complete development of contemporary instrumental practice. Issues which become very urgent in guitar practice.

Following preliminary studies that I conducted at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology Zurich (ZhdK) and the Hochschule für Music Basel (FHNW), the use of spherical amplification it has proven to be an efficient solution. Through my collaboration with the electroacoustic musician Giuseppe Silvi (LEAP Rome), in April 2023, S.T.OOGE was built, the first prototype of a tetrahedral loudspeaker (based on outward-radiating FOA) specifically designed for guitar amplification. Implementing S.T.OOGE in one’s own performance practice means profoundly redefining the scope of such, reestablishing a live contact with sound, and gaining awareness of the interactions between instruments, bodies, and spaces. My research aims to investigate these interactions, discover the new performative scope offered by spherical amplification strategies in contemporary guitar practice, and explore the new compositional insights offered by S.T.OOGE.

The research will develop concurrently with my ongoing professional activity (solo, chamber music, and ensemble performances), when interacting with different spaces, repertoires, musicians, composers, and audiences. The technical fine-tuning and software implementation of S.T.OOGE will occur alongside the artistic research, in a continual dialectic exchange between artistic needs and technological drive.