A Short Introducion..

[sarajanes@mdcs.com (Sarajanes)]

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