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Dig if u will my research paper Chapter 3



Chapter 3
The Invention of Live Looping
As with many things that are Œinventedı it is hard to judge exactly who
invented Live-Looping and whether it was simply in the air at that time or
if it was the creation of a specific person or group of persons. It is
therefore also problematic to say who created the first Live-looping
composition. However, what can be clearly shown were the strong
personalities of the time who would go on to leave their mark in history
emerging as the leaders of this new form of music composition.
History
During the early 1960s a group of young composers came together in San
Francisco at the Tape Music Centre. Among them were Terry Riley, Pauline
Oliveros, Steve Reich, Morton Subotnick, Richard Maxfield, and Ramon 
Sender.
However, many of these composers had previous contact with each other, for
example, Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros studied together at Berkley. This
group of composers with the addition of La Monte Young would go on to 
create
a new genre of music called Minimalism of which Live-Looping was a part. I
believe it is important to recognise that this melting pot of composers
exchanging ideas and experiences was extremely significant in the forming 
of
each composerıs individual style. One of the reasons that it is difficult 
to
state an absolute inventor of Live-looping is because of the nature of the
sharing and creation of so much innovative music by this group of people at
that time. However out of all of this it was Terry Riley whose early
contribution to Live-Looping clearly stood out as being the most prominent.

Terry Riley
Terry Riley studied at The University of California at Berkley in the 
autumn
of 1958 and it was here he met La Monte Young whose influence upon Riley 
was
considerable. Young introduced Riley to the ideas of Cage after he returned
from a period of study with Stockhausen (in Darmstadt, Germany in 1959).
Young with the help of Riley tried out his Cage-influenced ideas as
composers in residence for the Anne Halprin Dance Company. Young also
introduced Riley to the idea of repetition as a form of change with his
piece X for Henry Flynt where a performer would essentially repeat a loud
sound over and over. In the autumn of 1960 Young left Berkley for New York
leaving Riley alone. It was around this time that Riley began his
experiments with tape loops.
Rileyıs early tape based compositions were guided by an expert in the field
of tape editing Richard Maxfield. His piece Mescalin Mix was Rileyıs first
attempts at live looping, ²with the help of Ramon Sender, he made use of an
Echoplex, a primitive electronic contraption allowing a sound to be 
repeated
in an ever accumulating counterpoint against itself²  . It is clear that
these early experiments with tape looping had a profound effect on Riley,
this was the beginning of his fascination with repetition.
In 1963 Riley went to Europe where he was influenced by ragtime, marijuana,
Moroccan music, and the Jazz music of John Coltrane with its fusion of
non-western music. While in Europe the combination of drugs, modal music 
and
a fascination with repetition lead Riley to discover his identity as a
composer. It was here that he oversaw the creation of what would become the
foundations for the Live-Looping movement.
In 1963 Riley gained access to the ORTF radio studios in Paris where he
described the layering looping technique he had used with an Echoplex in 
his
piece Mescalin Mix to a French technician. The technician set up a similar
system with a pair of Ampex tape machines. The system consisted of a 
matched
pair of decks with the tape threaded around both, one deck was set to 
record
(input) the other playback (delay) the output of the playback deck was then
fed back into the record deck allowing a musical phrase to be repeated.
Riley termed this arrangement of tape recorders the ıTime-Lag Accumulatorı
on account of its ability to accumulate the audio input over a period of
time. This system became the blueprint for live looping and would be copied
by other artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, and Robert Fripp.
Having discovered this processing system Riley went on to use it to write
She Moves Me and Music For The Gift. In the piece She Moves Me Riley took
the input of an actors voice and layers it using the Time lag accumulator,
creating vast washes of text. The piece The Gift used different source
material and was made up of reassembled lines from a cover of Miles Davisıs
composition So What. Riley had recorded Chet Bakerıs band playing the song,
recording each instrument separately, this allowed him to cut up the piece
and creatively reassemble it using just the phrases he wanted. So What is 
an
intensely modal piece and the links between Riley cutting up and assembling
the modal phrases of it for repetition and accumulation in The Gift and his
later work In C which also uses a similar process are clear.
Riley now returned to San Francisco and continued his work with tape loops
and processing via the Time-Lag-Accumulator. Riley created 3 works with 
text
furthering his explorations from the piece She Moves Me. The first of these
was simply entitled I (July 1964) ³This is based entirely on the single 
word
I, spoken using a variety of inflections and subject to feedback processes
which accumulate powerfully to produce a continuous drone.²  . Followed by
Itıs Me and Thatıs Not You which were created in late 1965 using only a
single voice and the time-lag accumulator processing. This work that Riley
did with text and the use of tape recorders would have a profound effect on
the young composer Steve Reich who had befriended Riley at this time. 
(Reich
first tape piece Its Gonna Rain was premiered at the Tape Music Centre in
Jan 1965) Rileyıs other tape pieces from this time also showed him making
extensive use of tape editing and time-lag processing these were ³Shoeshine
(June 1964), The Bird Of Paradise (summer 1964), and the piece entitled In 
A
flat October (1964).²  In 1967 Riley acquired his first synthesizer which 
he
used on the piece Youıre Nogood. This composition was to be the first of
many he would write for synthesizer and tape delay.
Around 1964 Riley began using the Time-Lag Accumulator to process his
keyboard and saxophone improvisations in live performance. This was another
important watershed. These improvisations saw the creation of what Riley
would call ŒSolo Time-Lag Musicı. Riley combined keyboard drones with 
layers
of improvised soprano saxophone all processed through the
ŒTime-Lag-Accumulatorı to mesmerising effect. The first of these pieces was
called Dorian Reeds (performed early in 1967) following that came Poppy
Nogood and the Phantom Band, which was essentially an extension of the same
idea. 
Through this creative use of technology Riley redefined the role of the 
solo
performer. Through his use of tape delay Riley was able to compose,
improvise and accompany himself in real-time creating multi part
arrangements. This opened up new possibilities for real-time performance
freeing up the solo performer to achieve soundscapes that were previously
impossible. Riley would continue to refine his improvisational art
throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s this can be heard on the 1969
recording A Rainbow in Curved Air. Rileyıs recorded work still represents
some of the most complex and well-executed use of Live-Looping even today.

Other Loopers of the time
Terry Riley was not the only person to explore the possibilities of looping
during the 1960s. In fact it is entirely arguable that Riley did not invent
this technique. My research has revealed a much cloudier picture of the
early use of tape delay in music composition than has been previously
suggested. It is does however seem that the explosion of tape delay
composition centred around one particular place in America, The San
Francisco Tape Music Centre (S.F.T.M.C.).

The San Francisco Tape Music Centre was founded in 1961 by Morton 
Subotnick,
a former member of the Mills College Music Department, and Ramon Sender, 
who
received his M.A. in composition from Mills in 1965. Although the original
impetus behind its formation was to meet the needs of a small group of
composers- including Sender, Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and
Anthony Martin ­ who needed access to equipment and a venue to present
concerts of experimental music, the Tape Music Centre quickly developed a
unique philosophy and aesthetic mission.

By questioning the various members of the S.F.T.M.C. I have attempted to
demonstrate that there is an alternative argument to Riley being the tape
delays sole inventor. Morton Subotnick informed me on the subject of tape
delay that, 
This technique and others like it were being used by the late 50's..some in
San Francisco by the Tape Centre (Ramon, Pauline and myself).Vladimir
Ussachevsky was using all sorts of time lag. Mauricio Kagel had a work for
percussion where the material the musicians played was recorded and brought
back later in the composition. It would be a gross simplification to give
the credit to any one person, it was in the air and remains in the air. The
introduction of the tape recorder made us all aware of the possibility of
bringing things back, altered and/or layered.
Pauline Oliveros took a similar view to that of Subotnick about the early
use of tape delay (a la the Riley set-up) in music composition. She 
informed
me that she felt that the system was invented by a group of people working
together calling it a ³community of interest²  going on to say,
The system was already invented. Various composers around the same time
discovered that echo could happen with tape delay. The first loop that I 
was
involved with was during a 1960 concert with Ramon Sender and Morton
Subotnik. A tape was strung across two machines for a long delay that 
picked
up our sounds as we improvised. The concert was reviewed by Alfred
Frankenstein in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Pauline also confirmed to me that all the composers within the S.F.T.M.C
were experimenting with this technology in the early 1960s. Oliveros
confirmed her role in tape delay based composition saying that most of her
time from 1960 onwards was devoted to it. There is no doubt that Oliveros
went on to become one of the premier composers and innovators of the
live-looping movement affirming her commitment and expertise with pieces
like I of VI (1966) and C(s) for Once (1966).
Another person of significance that I spoke to was Ramon Sender also a
founder member of the S.F.T.M.S. Interestingly he took the opposite point 
of
view to Oliveros and Subotnick saying ³To my knowledge, Terry was the first
to put one tape through two Wollensaks (tape recorders) set ten or so feet
apart, the first one on Œrecordı the second one on ŒPlaybackı. I copied his
technique various times in performances.²  Ramon also revealed that he 
tried
to find different applications for the Riley set-up demonstrating the fact
that a community of people were experimenting with this technology at the
time. Sender also informed me that the earliest and only piece he wrote to
use the Time-Lag Accumulator system was called Piano Canon and was 
presented
at the San Francisco conservatory in 1962 (approximately) and consisted of 
a
microphone placed inside a piano with two tape recorders spaced apart a la
the Riley set-up.
When I asked Terry Riley about what other members of the San Francisco Tape
Music centre had said his response was
It is entirely possible that this idea occurred to many people around this
time and as I could not possibly be everywhere and hear everything I could
not verify this. I had never before heard the kind of echo effect that was
achieved in my 1963 recording of Music For The Gift before it was done in
Paris.  So for me it was the first time.
Whether Riley was the first Live-Looper may remain unclear, however what 
can
clearly be stated is Rileyıs defining role in being the most acclaimed and
accomplished Live-Looper of the time. His role is perhaps best described by
himself
Throughout the 1960's and early 70's I worked exhaustively and almost
exclusively with delay techniques in live performance with works like Poppy
Nogood And The Phantom Band and Rainbow In Curved Air.  These are 
documented
in my CBS recordings and others.  If I was not the first, which is 
possible,
I think I was the first to develop these forms so intricately and
extensively.