Re: FYI: Mother Mallard's Mobius Tape Loop

[Alex Stahl <alex@pixar.com>]

A Mobius strip is made by taking a strip-- a ribbon or piece of tape for
example, twisting it one-half turn, and joining the ends. The half-twist
gives a Mobius strip its famous one-sidedness. But if you threaded this
through a tape recorder, the oxide surface would pass the heads only every
other pass. On alternate passes you would be attempting to play back the
backside of the tape, which might give you a muffled print-through-y kind
of sound but that is probably not what you meant.

I suspect they used a simple two-sided tape loop, not a true Mobius strip.




>For those who aren't familiar with, or are just unaware of the
>Mobius Loop's relevance, here's an excerpt from an interview
>with Mother Mallard (one of the first all-synth bands from the
>late-1960's/early 1970's:
>
>"A few of our pieces, like Steve's CERES MOTION employed the use of a
>mobius strip tape loop. Gordon Mumma turned us on to these. They came
>in various time lengths. You could tape something live and at the end
>of the tape, turn off the record button and play it back instantly. Each
>of us had a stopwatch to keep track of the loop lengths. The first part
>of CERES MOTION is what is now commonly called a pad. Steve and I recorded
>the pad (around 5 minutes), played it back instantly, and being a loop,
>it would go on forever until we turned off the tape recorder."
>
>The whole interview is at:
>http://members.aol.com/Cuneiform3/mallard.html
>
>- Larry