The Electric Guitar: An Instrument Of Chaos

If, as just about everybody seems to know these days, the simple flap of a butterfly's wings in the rain forest of Brazil can ultimately be responsible for a tornado in Texas, you can't help wondering what havoc might eventually result from some madly over-enthusiastic electric guitarist at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City frantically thrashing his plectrum across the strings of a Gibson Les Paul when it's plugged into a Marshall 200-watt stack that's been cranked up to pain-inducing volume.

Or, to put it another way, once a guitarist has plugged his axe into a vast, anarchic configuration of pedals, shifters, signal processors, distortion boxes, echoplexes and the rest, he can all too easily find himself playing a note and having absolutely no idea what's going to be coming out at the other end. This is even more true should he decide to employ some "stagecraft" or "extended technique" and rub his guitar up and down the mic stand, or smash his guitar to smithereens on the speaker cabinets, or, just to take a for instance, set fire to the damn thing.

There seems to be something interesting going on here, some interesting parallels. What we're talking about is chaos theory; a profoundly new hip science, the significance of which is pretty much taken for granted in such diverse fields as mathematics, astronomy, particle physics, economics, even architecture and urban planning; yet its consequences for rock and roll guitar playing have so far remained largely unacknowledged. It's time to put that right.

And if by chance you think I’m just desperately trying to yoke together two quite unrelated disciplines, you should bear this in mind: if you asked a scholar of chaotics what it is he actually does all day, he would most likely tell you that he "observes the unstable aperiodic behavior that can be found in mathematically simple systems". Okay, well, surely mathematical systems don’t get much simpler than your basic rock and roll, and very few people on earth display more unstable aperiodic behavior than lead guitarists. Consider the life and works of Jeff Beck: declining to play at Woodstock, only having Rod Stewart sing on the B-side of his greatest hit, taking on the rhythm section of Vanilla Fudge as his band. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Moreover, what chaos theory does is link together the random and the ordered. It shows how a system that obeys fundamental laws can still be capable of disorder and complexity. There are those, of course, who think guitar playing should not be complex at all, that it should always remain simple and stick to the basics. (These people are generally not fans of Frank Zappa or Steve Vai.) But we’re talking about complexity of a slightly more specialized variety. This kind of complexity is defined as the study of "life at the edge of chaos", where systems are suspended between stability and total dissolution; which is as good a description of a Sonic Youth gig as I’ve ever come across.

What leads to complexity in systems (and here’s a term that even the most unscientific rocker will understand) is feedback. Whereas the old science would have said you only get out what you put in, chaotics tells us that the opposite is sometimes true too. What you’re getting out sometimes has a profound effect on what you put in. When some wall of horrible, squalling feedback starts coming out of the amps, getting hideously loud and out of control and making your ears feel as though they’re bleeding, this has a really profound non-linear effect on what the guitarist plays next. Sometimes it may even make him turn down the volume, although equally, guitarists being what they are, it’s just as likely to make him turn it up.

One distinguishing feature that scientists observe in chaotic systems is their "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". This means that very slight differences at the beginning of apparently similar systems will later result in enormous divergence as these systems develop independently. For instance, two guitarists may both start out playing a perfectly simple rock classic, say "Louie Louie". Initially both renditions will inevitably sound fairly similar, since there are only so many ways anybody can play that very basic song. However, after an hour or two of jamming, as the two guitarists start to get bored, to improvise or "express themselves", one guitarist’s version may have perhaps mutated into a kick-ass rendition of "Wild Thing", while the other could be playing Glenn Branca’s "Symphony Number 5". This, in a sense, is what the Grateful Dead based their whole career on.

Certain listeners to rock music, of course, just find guitar solos boring and repetitive, but chaos theory has some consolation for these people too. They can take comfort in knowing that what they’re observing in the solo is a kind of "self-similarity", and that this is precisely what we find in fractals, and everybody knows that fractals are totally cool.

Self-similarity is the way in which any subsystem of a fractal is structurally identical to the whole system. Blood vessels, for instance, can be thought of as fractals since they start out large but then divide into ever smaller and smaller capillaries, but all performing the same function. Within the overall shape, however elaborate, there lies a constant, predictable, repetitive pattern. This is note precisely the same thing as playing a single note over and over again on your guitar, but it’s probably near enough for the layman.

Students of chaos theory also speak fondly of "attractors", or even "strange attractors". Attractors are the states to which a complex system will finally settle. The pinball may bounce all over the table, rack up any number of points and replays, but sooner or later it’s eventually going to fall down the hole. In the same way, a guitarist, any guitarist, however "tasteful" or "restrained" or even "avant-garde" will eventually end his solo by playing lots and lots of notes as fast as he possibly can down by the sixteenth fret and then finish on a power chord. Yes, it may seem a little predictable but the fans seem to like it, and, let’s face it, you can’t fight the inevitable.

Strange attractors are a little different. In chaos theory they’re multi-dimensional objects existing in infinite space. Rock guitarists, however, are more likely to be strangely attracted to drugs, groupies, and the delights of commissioning an absurdly elaborate customized instrument lacquered with candy flake and inlaid with the bones of endangered species.

However, as the Russian researchers Boris Chirikov and Felix Izrailve have pointed out, there’s something rather paradoxical about strange attractors in that they only look strange to those outside the system. Once you’re part of the chaos they’re pretty much what you’d expect. So, for instance, nobody should be entirely surprised that Keith Richards is an avid book collector, that Eric Clapton dated Sheryl Crow, that Eddie Van Halen plays golf. What the heck, it’s rock and roll. Deal with it. You can’t fight the inevitable.

And inevitability may just be another name for entropy. Now, the Second Law of Thermodynamics places time in a central position in the universe. It sees the universe as a machine that’s running down, towards a state of maximum disorganization, and time, therefore, becomes an arrow that can only point one way. Complexity, however, suggests that the Second Law isn’t the whole story. Complexity suggests that not all systems move toward entropy and disorder, and this raises certain questions about the direction of time’s arrow. This may explain why Dick Dale can still have a career playing surf guitar, but only so long as his music appears in a film by Quentin Tarantino. Similarly Jimmy Page can have a top ten hit, but only when he’s been sampled by P. Diddy.

And finally we come to turbulence. Now, a lot of people may think of all rock music as inherently turbulent, but if so they’re being a little unscientific. Turbulence is defined as "a mess of disorder at all scales". It’s unstable; it dissipates energy and creates drag. You can see it anytime you turn on a faucet. If the flow is relatively gentle, the water pulsates a little but forms a regular moving column, which demonstrates "periodic motion". But turn the tap wide open, and the motion of the water becomes irregular and chaotic. It is demonstrating turbulence.

I think we’re no longer describing rock music here. What we’re really talking about is the weird and incomprehensible world of "free jazz", a genre in which a bunch of tubby old guys with beards, occasionally guitarists but mostly sax players, all play at once without having rehearsed or decided what key or time signature they’re in. And that’ a musical form that I suspect no scientist or chaos theorist is ever likely to explain to anyone’s satisfaction.