Black Lion

by George Fetner

This piece was composed in 2007 for Michael Harley. The piece can be purchased from Fetner's bandcamp site.

Setup

Necessary Equipment

Instructions

This piece requires a pickup, such as the Little-Jake, as well as two guitar pedals and amplification. The first pedal is DigiTech's Whammy pedal, which is a somewhat unique pedal. It harmonizes the incoming sound, but also uses its expression pedal to do a glissando between two harmonic settings. The Whammy II that Fetner used in writing the piece has a toggle function to switch between two effects. This is absent in newer versions of the Whammy. Instead, there is only one knob to turn to switch effects. Newer versions can be controlled with MIDI, which can somewhat replicate the toggle function. The Whammy's functionality may be found in some multieffects pedals like the Helix models. The other pedal is a standard delay pedal.

The Whammy pedal uses two settings. One setting harmonizes a perfect fourth to a perfect fifth above the input, depending on the position of the expression pedal. The other setting harmonizes between an octave below the input and an octave above the input. The delay pedal should use 80%-90% feedback, and an effect or mix level of 80%-90%. The rate of delay should be around 108 beats per minute, or 556 miliseconds.

The setup for this piece is shown below. The Whammy pedal needs to be before the delay pedal in the effects chain.

Notation

Recordings

Difficulty

From a technical standpoint, this piece is well within the range of an undergraduate student. The range is not extreme, and rhythmically is not too complex. However there are no barlines or meter markings, so the performer needs to determine the metrical structure. The electronic difficulty is not too difficult. A staff below the bassoon part shows when pedals should be pressed and what the position of the Whammy expression pedal should be. Most of the changes are not near each other. Perhaps one difficulty is switching a newer Whammy from the fourth and fifth mode to the octave mode if a MIDI pedal is not used to switch the effect. Overall, this piece is applicable for undergraduate students and perhaps would be a good candidate for a student's first piece with effects pedals.

Style

Black Lion is a very accessible piece and would be enjoyed by any audience.