Experimental Rock - Common Elements

Common Elements

Some of the more common techniques 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. 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 playing techniques—for example, 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, screaming, using death growls, howling or making a clicking noise.

• Incorporation of instruments, tunings, rhythms or scales from non-Western musical traditions.
• Use of sound sources other than conventional musical instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
• Playing with deliberate disregard for the ordinary musical controls (pitch, duration, volume).
• Creating experimental musical instruments for enhancing the timbre of compositions and exploring new techniques or possibilities.
• Use of dissonance, atonality and noise
• Use of electronic devices, digital manipulations and modular synthesizers.
• Experimental rock is also very often influenced by 20th century classical music