From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths to the Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre in/as Schismogenesis in North American Christianity

This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important sites of theological and ethical negotiation. Further, these sites of negotiation serve as the raw material for the construction of differentiating space for identity and belonging in musical communities, facilitating the emergence of new communities as well.