Glenn Branca was an American avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series, he was a driving force behind the genres of no wave, totalism and noise rock. Branca received a 2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Glenn Branca performing at Hallwalls in the 1980s
One of the many custom instruments created by Branca.
The Glenn Branca Ensemble performing Symphony No. 4 Physics in Europe 1983. Featuring some of the custom made instruments
The Glenn Branca Ensemble, 2012 in Washington, D.C.
In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece. A drone may also be any part of a musical instrument used to produce this effect; an archaic term for this is burden such as a "drone [pipe] of a bagpipe", the pedal point in an organ, or the lowest course of a lute. Α burden is also part of a song that is repeated at the end of each stanza, such as the chorus or refrain.
A Lady Playing the Tanpura, ca. 1735.
Highland bagpipes, with drone pipes over the pipers' left shoulders