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Kim - thanks for that confirmation. I had
seen on the web, Mike Battle's name, and dates ranging from 1960-1963 for the
"creation of the Echoplex".
Richard - you are an amazingly rich and generous
resource! :) Thank you for calling the man himself.
So, then... if Mike Battle starting making
prototype 'Plexes in the late 50's, was he aware of, or involved in, the
activities of Riley, Oliveros, Reich, et. al. at that time? Was it really,
as it seems, that an Echoplex made it into Riley's hands... he explained it to
someone... who implemented the idea in a different way (large tape decks)...
which Riley tagged the "time lag accumulator"... which Riley continued to use
and others used later as live looping devices... sorta like that?
Again, curious.
Thanks!
Doug
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: Dig if u will my research
paper Chapter 3
At 2:15 PM -0700 5/27/03, Kim Flint wrote:
Mike Battle made his first Echoplex tape
delay prototypes in 1963, according to this post:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=52nksm%24aqu%40casaba.srv.cs.cmu.edu
I would guess production would have started
sometime later, so the dates don't appear to match up quite
right.
I just called Mike Battle, and while I can't say there's a definitive
answer to this question, here's what he told me:
Mike and a friend started building tape delay units in the late 1950s,
and the units would dribble out to various musicians. It wasn't until 1964
that he received a patent for the Echoplex, but it seems likely that a number
of them were in circulation under that name even before that date.
I've found references with dates of 1960 and 1962 for the Echoplex.
Analog Echoplex fanciers will be happy to know that Mike Battle's new
design, the "TubePlex" will be available in numbers at the summer NAMM show in
Nashville
Here's what Ramon Sender told me about his early exposure to and use of
tape systems:
If Pauline is referring to feeding one tape through two
Wollensaks,
the first on record and the second on playback, this set-up was
first
demonstrated to me by Terry Riley who I think said that he
and
Lamont Young used it during a dance performance of Anna
Halperin's
troupe during the period they were the composers involved with
her.
I then used it for a 'piano canon' performance during a Sonics
Concert,
if I recall correctly. We're talking the fall-spring of
1961-62?
I also had an Echoplex-type machine at the Conservatory that
I
abused happily during some early tape pieces, until I
discovered
I could get a more natural echo by recording in the men's
bathroom.
Les Paul's thing was the Les
Paulverizer.
...which had nothing to do with tape loops. It was just a button mounted
on his guitar that enabled him to start and stop a cassette deck with a
prerecorded backing tape on it. --
______________________________________________________________
Richard
Zvonar, PhD
(818)
788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com
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