A Beautiful Chainsaw (2026)

for electric clarinet. 8.5 min.

Premiered by Christopher A. Kaminski at the Quincy Mine’s New Music in the Mine concert on September 30th, 2026, hosted by Michigan Tech University.

There is a famous sound within the metal community called the “chainsaw sound.” This sound is generally achieved by taking the Boss HM-2 (or HM-2w) Heavy Metal guitar pedal and turning all of the knobs all of the way up. If you have never heard it before, the song “Revel in Flesh” by Entombed is a great example of the chainsaw sound in isolation; to describe the sound, it is brutal, hypercompressed, and in-your-face, sounding more fuzz-like than distortion. When I discovered this sound, I immediately bought the HM-2w pedal for my electric clarinet and imagined writing a piece called “Chainsaw” that would be a three minute shred-a-thon. When I first played with the pedal, however, my expectations were completely subverted, and I was shocked at how different the chainsaw sound manifested on the electric clarinet. Instead of writing “Chainsaw” like I originally imagined, this piece became “A Beautiful Chainsaw.”

Technology Requirements

You must use a method that does not give feedback. I have the PiezoBarrel 'Wood' pickup made by Steve Francis, and I found it at <https://piezobarrel.com/products.htm>. Alternatively, there is the HornFX intraMic, though I have not personally used it. 

Do not use external microphones to amplify the clarinet.

This pickup will go into a small pedalboard that has the following pedals: noise gate, distortion, chorus, and ambient reverb, with an optional volume pedal. This pedalboard will require a power strip. The pedalboard will go out to the PA system in the hall, or to a speaker. You may also desire a monitor. 

The pedal order should be:

Pedals and their Function:

You do not need to use the same pedals that I used, but the Boss HM-2w is very, very important to the sound of this piece. If you cannot use or find a Boss HM-2w, please try your hardest to use a distortion sound that is similar to it. For every other pedal, please use any pedals that have the same function. I list the pedals that I used originally in case you wanted to hear what that sounds like.

Noise Gate: (original pedal used: Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor)

• This pedal is meant to cut out key clicks and breath sounds from the clarinet.

Distortion: (original pedal used: Boss HM-2w Heavy Metal)

• This pedal is the entire point of the piece: to achieve the “chainsaw” sound. I turned every knob all the way up except the Volume knob, since I do not personally have an amplifier or speaker that can handle the amount of volume that this pedal outputs. I set my Volume knob to about 10 o’clock.

Chorus: (original pedal used: Boss CH-1 Super Chorus)

• This pedal is meant to apply a subtle chorus effect. 

Ambient Reverb: (original pedal used: Chase Bliss MOOD MKII)

• This pedal is meant to create an ambient wash of reverb, with a very long tail (5 - 20 seconds, or 5000-20000 milliseconds). 

• My original recording only used the left side of the pedal on reverb mode, with both the Time and Modify knobs turned all the way up to have as much reverb as possible. I also set the Clock knob to maximum (for higher quality reverb), and kept the Mix knob at 50/50. 

(Optional) Volume: (original pedal used: Boss FV-30H Volume Pedal) 

• This is meant to control how much output is being sent to the PA / speakers. 

• The Boss HM-2w has so much gain that there is an audible noise that outputs constantly. In this piece, I have embraced that noise, but it may cause awkwardness at the start and end of the piece. If you want, you can start the piece with every other pedal activated and the volume pedal turned all the way down. Before you play the first note, you can fade in the noise with the volume pedal. Similarly, you can end the piece after the last note finishes by fading out the noise too.

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