Tape Music, Tape Loops, Tape Manipulations

Then you can set-up an even more complex system with two tape machines (google Frippertronics) so that you're feeding the output of one tape machine into the input of another. If the two machines are running different length loops all sorts of interesting patterns will build up and collide against each other.

The term "tape loop" can also mean a static loop where you're not actually recording something live but just looping a prerecorded sound. On old disco records for example, the engineer would take a few bars of a drum beat and splice it into a loop so it repeats endlessly and perfectly like a looped sample.

Musique concrete pioneered some of these techniques but it was also involved in splicing together tiny bits of tape out of real world sounds to create elaborate sound collages. Tape manipulation was also a big part of early electronic music when people working in university labs had big banks of test oscillators that had to be set manually. They would record the various tones needed for a piece to tape and then edit them together manually to create the final piece. The difference with Musique Concrete is that the composers were interested in using only sounds from real life while the people who practiced "electronic music" were interested in electronically generated sounds. The tape techniques both camps used were basically the same though.

From an interview about the 60's SF Tape Music Center scene, Pauline Oliveros (then with Ramón Sender & Morton Subotnick as Sonics) :
"Ramón came to town and we began improvising together on our tape music concerts. We felt that it was important to keep live performance going along with tape compositions. Ramon composed Desert Ambulance for me using a Chamberlin organ as a source for his tape. The organ consisted of sounds on tape loops with a keyboard - an early version of a kind of sampler. The recordings were of real instruments and voices (...)"

-- Rockist_Scientist (Al__suca...), Today 7:26 PM. (RSLaRue)

HI DERE: Mills College, Oakland, CA (formerly known as SF Tape Music Center)
also: Oliveros annual "Deep Listening" Retreat

yeah, she has kids workshops and stuff. all deep listening-related.

Ebay. I think a Revox A77 might be a good bet that's not too expensive. I have a huge boat anchor of a Studer mono B67 that I don't know how to get rid of if you want to take it off my hands.

if you are lucky enough to track one down, you could buy the tdk endless cassette - a tape loop cassette. fantastic things.

it's got absolutely nothing to do with pauline oliveros mind you.

for example you can take the playback head out of an ordinary walkman and do some pierre boulez type stuff -- cut up a cassette tape and past the pieces onto a board, then run the head the over the pieces. it takes some practice, but you can do it.

these digital kids thinking their doing all this hot loop stuff on their laptops or these pedal heads with the ubiquitous samplers... they all sound the same and almost all are derivative.

You mean Pierre Schaeffer? Or perhaps Pierre Henry? Confusing isn't it?

someone at the 1958 world's fair cut up bits of tape and mounted them on the wall. then invited viewers to run playback heads over the tape manually.

trivia time! Sender's son Johnny Sender was the bass player for Konk and now works with Bruce Smith from the Pop Group. He's also a great disco/hip-hop/latin DJ.

If you want to really do tape music...THE machine to use is the Otari MX-5050. That's what we were trained on at Oberlin, it's the standard in all studios, Jim O'Rourke had 2 of them when he still did everything by tape, etc.

Of course you can use any old piece of junk, Radio Shack used to sell splicing blocks and tape. The only other tool you need is a grease pencil to mark up the tape. The trick about tape loops with reel-to-reels and why it's not as easy to do it with cassettes is that in the cassette player, which is basically two reels in a little plastic case, the reel spins and pulls the tape, but in a reel-to-reel, there's a thing called the Capstan that pulls the tape through, and the reel just spins to pick up the slack, but isn't needed.

When I was an electronic music major at the Oberlin Conservatory, our first assignment was Musique Concrete. We went around with a cassette deck and recorded sounds, then transferred them to the Otari, then went back and forth between the Otari and some sort of 8track I don't remember. Tape loops, splices, speeding up and slowing down, etc. I think I taped some tape to a pencil and tried to play it on the head like Laurie Anderson (or Severed Heads on Exploring the Secrets of Treating Deaf Mutes)

http://cgi.ebay.com/OTARI-MX5050-BIII-2-Track-Analog-Tape-Recorder_W0QQitemZ7356963101QQcategoryZ15199QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You should start hanging out at Harvest Works and see if they'll let you take the old tape decks out of the closet.

http://harvestworks.org/

xpost

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Analog-Siemens-Tape-Delay-Kraftwerk-style-echo-moog_W0QQitemZ7357184902QQcategoryZ17401QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Not like I'm going back to tape, ever, but...

fifty bucks!

surreal

God, I am SO old . . . . sigh.

that was Nam June Paik - the year is probably right, i wasn't aware of it being at a world's fair though.

i just wanted to add that mellotrons do not use tape loops- they cut off after about 10 seconds.

http://youtu.be/7AJX4flkK_w

https://vimeo.com/53891959