GUILFORD-Upon listening to Roger Clark Miller's new album, Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble one could be forgiven for forgetting the "solo" in the title.
Surely, you might think, this music is coming from a group of musicians. A guitar orchestra, carrying forth the tradition of avant-garde composer Glenn Branca's works? A contemporary continuation of Rhys Chatham's 1977 piece "Guitar Trio"?
Surprise! No. All of these layered, multihued sounds are coming from one person: Roger Clark Miller.
Lest you think these are all studio tricks, a result of numerous tracks piled on top of one another, consider this: The album was recorded in real time.
Want proof? Miller, of Guilford, plays these songs live, and he will do so at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Friday, July 25. All by himself, on four separate guitars, with the help of a variety of foot-pedals and one looping device.
Miller will perform tracks from Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, as well as some songs from his previous album, Eight Dream Interpretations For Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, at BMAC. His friend and colleague Michael Bierylo will open the show with a short set of modular synthesizer music.
Go see for yourself.
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Longtime fans of Miller's music will be less surprised by the singular origin and context-disrupting sounds of Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble. They know to expect innovation.
Throughout his musical career, Miller has incorporated elements of surrealism and psychedelic art to nudge the listener out of the bounds of genre, convention, and routine.
In late-1970s Boston, Miller co-founded influential post-punk band Mission of Burma with bassist Clint Conley. They added Peter Prescott on drums, and shortly thereafter, Miller recruited experimental composer Martin Swope as the band's live-audio engineer and tape-loop performer.
These manipulated prerecorded sounds, repeating, running in reverse, combined with Miller's feedback-flecked, dissonant, layered guitar sounds, provided a sonic counterpoint to Conley's hook-laden songwriting skills. The combination of discordant-yet-catchy tunes set Mission of Burma apart from most of the straightforward power-pop acts gracing stages and college radio.
After Mission of Burma split up in 1983 (they regrouped in the early 2000s, minus Swope), Miller swerved hard into a quieter turn, playing minimalist, classical piano with the band Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.
In the late 1980s, Miller joined Alloy Orchestra, which performed live scores to silent films. Rather than playing instruments typically used to accompany old movies, like organs or pianos, the orchestra used found objects, homemade instruments, a sampling synthesizer, and an accordion, clarinet, and musical saw.
An early model for what Miller has achieved in Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble came about in 1983, with his solo project Maximum Electric Piano. (The three albums Miller released under this name are available for streaming and purchase on his Bandcamp page.
Miller prepared his electric piano by placing items such as alligator clips, bits of wood, and combs on and around the strings.
"I could set up these crazy grooves, like John Cage," he said.
But, unlike Cage, Miller could loop the grooves. He had gotten his hands on the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay. This machine allowed a musician to capture brief swatches of notes and play them back in real time, thus adding layers to the music. Although commonplace in music today, this looping technique was a revolutionary concept in 1983.
"A friend recommended it to me, and I was astounded," said Miller. He still uses the device to this day.
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Miller called Maximum Electric Piano "the model for what I'm doing now," but his longtime interest in avant-garde and experimental music goes back almost two decades before he began that project.
In the late 1960s, when Miller was a teen at home in Ann Arbor listening to psychedelic rock music, his father encouraged him to attend the University of Michigan's Contemporary Direction Ensemble concert series.
"We would go from seeing the [proto-punk Detroit quintet] MC5 in the afternoon, to go to hear pieces by [electronic music pioneer Karlheinz] Stockhausen and [contemporary classical composer Krzysztof] Penderecki at night," said Miller. "It was the same music, just through a different prism."
A major inspiration for his journey to creating solo electric guitar ensemble music came locally: from Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center Director Danny Lichtenfeld.
Shortly after moving to southern Vermont from the Boston area, Miller made contact with Lichtenfeld.
"He was interested in me, which is always a surprise," said Miller.
As Miller tells it, Lichtenfeld was talking about Steve Reich's 1982 composition "Vermont Counterpoint," which is played using a variety of wind instruments (taped ahead of time) and an amplified flute (played live).
Miller said the conversation "triggered something" in him: "What if I got a bunch of guitars and a loop?"
That idea "opened, or smashed, the door in my mind," said Miller, who affectionately pointed out that Lichtenfeld disputes this version of the story.
"It's Danny's fault I'm doing this, and he won't claim it!" Miller said, laughing.
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"For a long time, I've wanted a lap steel to do slide," said Miller, who wondered, "What if I buy cheap lap steels and prepare them like I did with the piano? It's portable. I can get a groove from there."
His ideas kept spiraling, he said, connecting with his lifelong practice of keeping daily dream journals, which provided the context and inspiration for this psychedelic, instrumental music. He set the images from his dreams to sounds.
"I'm an experienced movie soundtrack composer," explained Miller. "Accompaniment has always been natural to me. The music is the visual, and being true to the dream is a large responsibility. Every note is something that happened in the dream."
As an example, Miller recounted the imagery in the dream that inspired the track "Russian Spy Canisters" and how he created the music to illustrate it.
"In my dream, I had just swam in from Europe to Boston Harbor. I was amazed I'd done this. The opening of this song is a long sequence of 'flow-y' music.
"Then, when I got to the harbor, I saw some Russian U-boat spy canisters. So, then in the song, I fade out the flow-y loop and do a delay of a glissando. I go slower and slower, down the slide. I hit an octave down. I'm underwater, deeper.
"Then I've captured a canister. I have to get to the surface to breathe, and then the music gets faster. There's one of those cootie-catchers [aka paper fortune-teller] or a Transformer [toy] in the canister. So a mechanical rhythm comes into the song. I fade out and, because then I'm at a party in the dream, where friends show up, and [punk rocker] Iggy Pop, I start a low-key, whacked-out groove."
Miller notes that, because everyone's dreams have commonalities to everyone else's, this music, while giving the listener individual meaning, is universal. While listening to it, "you can see your own dreams."
Having a steady supply of inspiration - nightly dreams, recorded in a special dream journal - allows Miller's music to remain fresh.
"I'm 73 years old and I'm not doing a retread of my earlier music," Miller said. "I keep going. I can keep composing every year from [images from] my dreams."
Because this music sounds like it is made by multiple musicians, or with studio multi-track trickery, but is made live by Miller alone, it is important to him that people see it performed live. In May, he did an East Coast tour for the album, and in the autumn he is hitting the road to the Midwest.
"It's hard playing this music live. It requires a lot of concentration. I have to build these loops, which I am doing live. I don't prerecord them. It's a mindf-k.
"It's very complicated music that's stressful to play. Everything has to happen at the same time," said Miller.
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For the gearheads out there, here is the equipment Miller uses to perform Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble. Four guitars. Three are inexpensive lap-steels on legs. On one of the lap-steels, Miller puts bass strings; on another, baritone guitar strings. This makes sounds like a koto, tom-tom drum, or bassline.
For some songs, he alters the lap-steels as he would a prepared piano: by using alligator clips on the strings "to disrupt the harmonic content so it can't be tuned," said Miller.
"It's from the subconscious," he said. "You can't figure out what the sound is."
One of the lap-steels, said Miller, "is tuned like Glenn Branca's guitar, to E. I play it like a slide, which gets a chorus-y effect, like a string section."
Around his neck, Miller plays a modified Fender Stratocaster, on which he changed two of the pickups. The front pickup is original and full-bodied, similar to the one often used by Jimi Hendrix, said Miller.
The middle pickup is "a cheap, '60s pickup, which is useful for gentle sounds. It doesn't have much personality. On the bridge, I use a humbucker pickup, which is brighter and edgier."
To match the sound and vision, Miller said he "stripped the finish off the guitar and had one of my drawings etched on it, to make it look psychedelic."
To create the live loops, Miller uses the Boomerang III Looper, which enables him to add layers. With it, he can change a loop's octave, he can reverse it, and slow it down. "The flexibility is mind-blowing," said Miller.
Miller uses a variety of effects pedals, which he controls with his feet. Some are made by Source Audio, such as the Nemesis Delay, which is first run through a Fuzz-Tone pedal, and the Vertigo Tremolo. He also uses two pedals from TC Electronic: the Sub 'n' Up Octaver, which gives him some low end, and the Flashback, which provides backwards delay. He notes he does not use an amp; the sound goes right to the P.A.
"When I'm performing, the tremolo and the delays go back and forth between the speakers. The delay and the stereo gets you into the unconscious world of dreams. It disrupts your regular concept of listening," said Miller, who notes he was heavily influenced by original Pink Floyd frontman, Syd Barrett.
"I wanted to make my own small chamber orchestra, but using only guitars. You're hearing five of me playing simultaneously," said Miller.
"When I'm playing loops, and I come to a different section of my dream, I have to find out if I already have a loop, or do I need to stop and make another one? I'm also changing from guitar to guitar," he added.
"Nobody I know is making music this way," said Miller. "But, when I hear these ideas and I know I can make them manifest, it's worthwhile."
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Roger Clark Miller's new album, Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, on Cuneiform Records, is available on the label's Bandcamp page (cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com). The album was recorded and mixed in 2024 at Guilford Sound, engineered by Dave Snyder (with Matt Hall), and produced by Miller and Snyder.
Miller will also have CD and LP copies for sale at his performance at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center at 10 Vernon St. in Brattleboro, on Friday, July 25. Electronic musician Michael Bierylo opens.
The show begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25, or $15 for BMAC members, and are available in advance by calling 802-257-0124, ext. 101, by visiting brattleboromuseum.org, or at the door, subject to availability.
Miller's other solo albums are available on his Bandcamp page.
Wendy M. Levy, a former staff reporter for this newspaper, is a Commons at-large writer and columnist for municipal news and arts.
This Arts column by Wendy M. Levy was written for The Commons.