Re: The hidden parts

[Dave Stagner <dstagner@icarus.net>]

Speaking of hidden parts, here's a cute trick I picked up from Roger
Miller's "Maximum Electric Piano" work.  In one piece, he builds up an
ever-denser wall of noise, until it's just washes of sound.  Then he
"cut out" a piece of the noise, an empty gap a couple of seconds long.
This makes the noise sort of rhythmic.  Then he starts playing a very
pretty piano part over it (not really in time to the loop), with this
wash of noise passing by in the background.  Very clever, very
effective.  Fripp did something similar on one of the pieces on "Let
the Power Fall", but because of the consistency of Fripp's tone
source, it works differently.  

The Roger Miller "Maximum Electric Piano" work is terrific stuff for
fans of looping, btw.  He used a Yamaha electric baby grand (the dinky
one with strings for on-stage use) with Cage-style preparations (slide
piano!).  This went into a volume pedal, a couple of fuzz boxes, an
analog delay, and an old Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Delay for looping.
With the prepared piano and fuzz, he could get lots of effective
percussion and sustaining tones as well as standard piano, and he's a
creative and radical musician.  It's probably really hard to find now.
I saw Roger Miller in concert then... maybe 20 people showed up.  He
made $100 and the bar lost money.  We were sitting in a semicircle
around the stage, gaping open-mouthed at this phenomenal wall of sound
pouring out.  I think it's the best one-man show I've ever seen.

-dave

By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly. 
Venus De Milo.
To a child she is ugly.       
   -Charles Fort              dstagner@icarus.net