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To Loopers Repeating Everywhere,
At Kim's suggestion I'm forwarding the
following text as a short introduction to any and all.....
Dear Kim,
Greetings my name is Bryan Helm, and my wife
just contacted "loopers delight" to subscribe.
I am the looper in the house however, she likes
to do e-mail, and beat me to the punch as far as
contacting you.Anyway my musical partner Dave
Stafford turned me on to your forum, and I
thought I would enjoy swapping verbal signals
with other loopers. As a point of reference I'm
38 years old and have been looping since 1979. I
started with a friend of mine using a couple of
quarter inch half-tracks at 7and 1/2 ips
(Tandberg and an Otari) returning signal through
a Roland Space-Echo to control gain. We inputted
all kinds of stuff(acoustic piano,acoustic
guitar, found instruments, meetings) but mostly
electric guitar w/effects and electric piano
(Wurlitzer) and a Roland RS-09 string box, and
an ARP 2600. We did limited release cassette
tapes as "Cloud Silence" and performed in the
central Ohio area in 1980 and 81 at Art museums
and Coffee houses, record stores, wherever we
could. We would use a microphone stand to act as
a capstan and seperate the two decks by feet to
accomplish maximum delay between repeating
signals. We based the system on the
illustration on the back of"Discreet Music"
by Brian Eno. Having seen "Frippertronics"
and better yet, heard it, we wanted to tweak
our gear around as much as possible to access
"like" textures. In general we could get close
to three minutes of decay time with 5 to 10+
seconds delay between signals depending on
deck positioning. We always tried to get maximum
signal input levels to minimize the inherent
noise ratios that loopinging in an analog tape
format brings into play. We four tracked
forwards against backwards loops
(standard,double,half and quarter speeds) and in
general had a good time, studio and live.We
morphed into a trio that played with pretaped
loops and then a quartet with no loops. In 1984
I obtained an Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Delay,
and looping analog style( helped by a dead deck)
was over. Having run over the sequencer thru
space-echo combination probably one too many
times, the EH unit was welcome and stayed my
sole signal processing unit until I added an
old Alesis Microverb and a Lexicon Jam-man with
the 32 second upgrade in 1994. I use all these
to process a Korg DW-8000, a Roland TR-505 drum
machine, acoustic/electric guitar, and voice.
I do live and studio work solo, and with Dave
Stafford as "Bindlestiff"- A real time looping
duet using no Midi or clock interfaces for
synch.I've been listening to electronic music
since 1968 but would probably be best labeled
a techno-primitive in my approach to manual and
electronic technique.For me looping is a
wonderful means of accessing textures that
always amuse and sometimes amaze. I've seen the
tools advance in the last decade towards more
and more players that I hope will bring the
eloquent truth of good loops to more ears.
"Ambient" works are still my favorite style
of looping to play and listen to. I look forward
to reading more comments, and welcome dialogue
via e-mail with any loopers at the following
address:
sarajanes@mdcs.com
Great to find this place in cyberspace.
I hope to visit the website later this week.
Sincerely,
Bryan
Helm