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Re: Dig if u will my research paper Chapter 3
Title: Re: Dig if u will my research paper Chapter
3
At 7:04 PM +0100 6/4/03, Geoff Smith wrote:
Thanks for that Richard,
I will correct this.
It's a really minor thing in the grand scheme of things!
You realize this is out on the main list! I have not problem with
that, but it's your choice whether to continue this off-list.
I remember you instructing me to look at
the music of Daniel Lentz and I think Carl Stone, I didn't get a
chance to look at that much of their music, I would be interested to
know what else you thought I left out of my history.
The importance of various composers and performers depends a lot
on the scope of such a history. We've seen recently how invested some
people are in the differences between various "schools" or
"categories" or "genres" or "styles" of
mediated-repetitive music. I think for a history focusing on live
looping in the sense of on-the-spot recording and playback there are
certain people who might be less significant as direct
influences.
For instance, Daniel Lentz: To my knowledge there was no
improvisational element to his delay-based work, but it certainly was
some of the most elaborate real-time composed delay music. I'd go so
far as to say that his compositions are the most precisely crafted and
executed of any music based on the mechanism of real-time recording
and playback.
As to Carl Stone's work, most of it is not loop music in a
conventional sense, but he was one of the first to use extreme
instances of multiply-layered recorded material (using analog tape),
live phrase sampling (using a Publison), turntablist/glitch
improvisation (again with a Publison, but more recently with
Max/MSP).
It's also essential to loop at Hugh LeCaine's work. His
loop-based performance instruments were among the first real looping
instruments (though they were preceded by the ORTF devices and
others). He carried this development through several design
iterations, and he was influential on others (such as Pauline
Oliveros).
It was hard for me to include everything
due to 10000word limit
If there were to be a book, or a journal article, this might be
relaxed.
Talking to Jim Fulkerson about the
contemporary classical side of Looping was really interesting and
there is clearly a whole world of artists I haven't looked
at.
I think one can find many different "contemporary classical
side[s]" depending on who one talks to. There have been many
pockets of activity and often the practitioners were only tangentially
(if at all) aware of each other's work. A lot of people may have done
a few experimental pieces and moved on to other ideas. This happens
all the time in artists' development.
There are probably a lot of pieces floating around (or now lost
to all but a few people's memories). Some of these may have been
influential on a small number of composers, but you'll probably never
know about them.
For instance, here are two of my own experiences:
1) In the summer of 1967 I spent an afternoon with a group
of friends smoking enormous amounts of dope while listening to the
newly-released Sgt. Pepper's album playing over and over on an
auto-reverse tape deck. During this time, or host (a very well-known
figure in the computer music and digital audio world, who at that time
was an undergraduate at MIT) also played a tape piece he had created
from the countoffs from many recordings by the Beatles and others. The
basic "ground" pattern was the
"one...two...three...four..." from Taxman, and I think I
also remember counts from I Saw Her Standing There, Sgt. Pepper's
(reprise), Woolly Bully, and others.
2) In 1976 I saw a demonstration of tape delay techniques
at the Audio Engineering Society convention in Los Angeles. Besides
the well-loved dual deck method, one of the tricks shown was a
technique of quickly placing a machine into reverse playback mode by
simply rethreading the tape the wrong way around the capstan. I used
this on one of my own pieces by running a normal dual-deck
4-track delay during the first 2/3 of a piece, then stopping and
rethreading before playing the tape back at double speed through the
remaining 1/3.
These were small influences on my compositional thought, and it
seems unlikely that these experiences were also influential on other
composers. I think there are a lot of similar situations, all of which
added together result in a set of related ideas being "in the
air."
I almost wish i hadn't re-written my
introduction to include the idea of 'genre' in Live-Looping and left
it as a history. It has been almost like a thorn in my side, because I
am really interested in the history, and most of my time has been
spent talking about genre.
I don't think it's wasted, but it is a can o' worms whenever you
try to impose a sense of order or "theory" on an organically
evolving practice (or collection thereof).
I still hope you write a
book.
Show me the money!
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com
