Creating The Echoplex

[Terry Blankenship <electricgypsys@yahoo.com>]

Hi Kim.

That was a very interesting and informative post.
I stand corrected.

The SF Tape Music Center sounds wonderful. That must
have been a blast.

(I lived Kraftwerk also).

Actually my main influence for looping was Steve
Reich, but he did it with live musicians when I saw
him.

You mentioned Les Paul. How did he do the layering
things he did live. I've seen him in videos with that
little black box on his guitar layering things. 

All the very best!
Terry

 
> 
> So what was the influence on me? In the looping
> universe I fell into, I can 
> see obvious connections to the SF Tape Music center
> and various related 
> musicians and composers. The new music scene in the
> SF bay area is full of 
> that influence. You hear it everywhere here, and
> I've been soaking it in 
> for years.
> 
> But most important, the SF Tape Center influence is
> why the people at the 
> Gibson R&D lab where I once worked in Berkeley
> thought the LoopDelay 
> looping machine that Matthias Grob created was
> exciting, and why we ended 
> up licensing it and working on it with Matthias and
> turning it into the 
> EDP. These were people interested, and even friends
> with, looping musicians 
> like Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Paul Dresher,
> etc. Those were well 
> known names around Gibson's g-wiz labs.
> 
> The Nashville end of Gibson liked the looper idea
> more due to finger 
> pickers who used loops and delays, like Chet Atkins
> and Phil Keaggy, and of 
> course Les Paul. They even wanted to do a version of
> the Echoplex called 
> the "Les Paulverizer" after the tape machine trick
> Les Paul used to use. 
> That is why Gibson was willing to commit the
> resources to do a project like 
> the Echoplex.
> 
> The electronic repetition in those music styles I
> listened to can be 
> obviously connected to groups like Kraftwerk and the
> various European 
> experimenters who influenced them,


> If you trace back the historical lineage of
> the use of loops in hip 
> hop, industrial/goth, most electronic dance music,
> and synth pop, you pass 
> through Kraftwerk most of the time, and then back to
> the SF Tape Center 
> scene, Stockhausen, Varese, etc. Fripp is on some
> other branch of the tree 
> that started from those same 60's influences and
> went another direction.
> 

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com