Turn to the Sea

Turn to the Sea was written for LAGQ back in 2005, and was the opening track of our “Spin” recording on Telarc. I wrote the piece with a somewhat experimental idea as a starting point: what if it began with each guitarist turning the tuning pegs of one of their strings, and then exploring the possibilities the new tunings created?  So, the piece starts one player tuning the 2^nd string up to C, another the 1^st up to F, then a 5^th string down to G, and finally a 4^th string down to C, each doing a brief cadenza to test out their new scordatura. A Celtic-inspired melody then enters, accompanied by some richly-voiced chords afforded by the unusual tunings. As the piece progresses, a passacaglia-like ostinato serves as the underpinning of an extended “bass” solo, punctuated by percussive tapping traded back and forth by two players. These tapping effects were also a bit of an experiment; by damping the strings over the fretboard, the tapping produces pitches on the “wrong side” of the string. That is, they sound the note between the fret and the nut, rather than between the fret and the bridge. As the intensity grows and the mood darkens, all four guitars utilize pull-offs onto open strings, reinforcing the B-C and E-F clusters.  The opening melody returns in a more celebratory manner, and the piece concludes with all four guitarists re-tuning open strings to finish on an unexpected A major chord.

The piece is also a bit of a meditation on the time signature of 5/4, which then is broken up into various divisions (5/8-5/8, 3/4-3/4-2/4-2/4, etc.) The main melody has a character somewhat reminiscent of a “sea shanty”, and the piece as a whole, with its stormy middle section, might be seen as a mini-portrait of an ocean voyage.  Despite the overtly maritime association of the title, it also has a double meaning: the piece begins, after all, with a guitarist “turning to the C.”