Parabola by Sándor Szabó and Kevin Kastning, has been released by Greydisc Records!  

Parabola Instrumentarium

Sándor Szabó
For the Parabola recording sessions, Sándor used only one instrument: a McCollum 12-string baritone guitar.  This instrument was based on the design specs of the Santa Cruz DKK-12.  Various stringing and tuning scenarios were employed.  For some pieces, the McCollum was strung as a 6-string baritone in Nashville tuning.  For others, it was strung as a 12-string baritone with Sándor's own tunings.

Kevin Kastning
For the Parabola recording sessions, my main instrument on most pieces was one which I invented and developed with the Santa Cruz Guitar Company: the Santa Cruz DKK-12 12-string Extended Baritone guitar.  For the entirety of the Parabola recording sessions, the DKK-12 was used with new experimental intervallic tunings of my own formulation; I did not use any concert or standard tunings for the DKK-12.

Parabola marks the recorded debut of another of my inventions, the double-course Alto guitar in A.  Though the Santa Cruz KK-Alto was not completed in time for the Parabola recording sessions, I used my Martin D-12-28 in the same alto tuning in A.

I played the DKK-12 on most tracks, with the exception of these four pieces: Hyperbola, Cartesian Other, Vertex IV, and Straxii, which were recorded using the Alto.

For Trencadis, I utilized an unorthodox right-hand approach which was neither fingers nor picks.

Neither Sándor nor I utilized any standard or concert tunings during the recording of Parabola.  We each utilized our own different intervallic tunings which we had created specifically for these recording sessions.  The colors, ranges, and textures produced by these new tunings certainly influenced the compositions we created and recorded for Parabola.  And finally, we both felt that the new colors produced by these new tunings were beautifully reflected in the cover art.