2019 · Chamber Music

Tap This

For Two Electric Guitars

Video

Live performance at Resonanzraum Hamburg with Nicolas Haumann (left) and Martin Donoso Vera (right)

Concept

Commissioned for Hamburg Dialogues 2019 and dedicated to Nicolas Haumann and Martin Donoso Vera, Tap This explores electric guitar as melodic instrument and percussive interface. The title references two-handed tapping—both hands striking fretboard, generating rapid sequences impossible through conventional plucking.

      The work challenges the electric guitar's cultural associations. Neither rock virtuosity nor contemporary abstraction, it seeks a third space where technical display serves compositional structure rather than spectacle.
    

Extended techniques—harmonic tapping, percussive strikes, prepared strings, feedback manipulation—transform guitars into hybrid electroacoustic instruments. Timbral exploration drives formal architecture: clean tones with chorus, overdriven distortion, tremolo-picked shimmer, prepared metallic resonances. The relationship between two guitars remains deliberately ambiguous—tight synchronization, independent trajectories, single composite instrument.

Specifications

Premiere	Resonanzraum, Hamburg — December 7, 2019
Duration	6 minutes
Instrumentation	Two electric guitars
Dedicated to	Nicolas Haumann & Martin Donoso Vera
Tools	AudioSculpt, Max/MSP, OpenMusic, Sibelius
Commission	Hamburg Dialogues 2019

Credits

Composition

Alessandro Anatrini

Dedicated to

Nicolas Haumann & Martin Donoso Vera

Premiere Performance

Nicolas Haumann & Martin Donoso Vera

Venue

Resonanzraum, Hamburg

Commission

Hamburg Dialogues 2019