Re: On being complete nerds

[Ken Fletcher <fletk@efn.org>]

Okay, but I must admit I was >attracted< by the nerdy, geeky nature of
this mailing list!  Here's some stuff I've been listening to lately: 

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ELpH vs COIL worship the glitch

Hitting Birth (depending on which side of the cd case you believe, the
album is called "Thirst of the Fast Three Years," "Kiss of the Last Three
Tears," or "Fast of the Thirst Free Years.")

Kristin Hersh "Hips and Makers"

The Best of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers:  The Berserkley Years

Babes With Axes "Live Axe"

Can "Saw Delight"

Hazel "Lucky Dog" (this was the advance cd title; I don't know what the
released title was; 1993 Sub Pop)

Wire "The Ideal Copy"

Team Dresch "Personal Best"

Rattlecake (self-titled)

Janos Starker plays Boccherini, Back, Vivaldi, Corelli, Locatelli,
Valentini (early-mid '60s recordings of a fine cellist, accompanied by
Gyorgy Sebok, piano)

Ani DiFranco "Living In Clip" and "Not a Pretty Girl"

Jethro Tull (inspired by seeing them a couple weeks ago in Eugene, I've
been going through my whole collection, which includes most everything
from "This Was" through "A")

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I guess there's not much looping in that list!  Oh well.  I love Public
Enemy.  They do a lot of looped spoken-word samples on their later stuff,
amongst all the other crazy sounds in their mixes.

On to looping that I like to do...

One thing I have done a lot of is take three carefully chosen sampled
loops of similar but not exactly the same length, and either start them
going at the same time or introduce the second and third loops at places
that feel appropriate in the first loop.  Then I like to let them play and
listen to how they slide against each other, always revealing something
new in their juxtaposition.  For example, my very first loop-based piece
consisted of 1) a couple of measures of the drums after the guitar fades
out at the end of "Behind the Wall of Sleep" on Black Sabbath's first
album, 2) the snakey bass-line from the beginning of "Bassically" which is
the very next piece on the same album, and 3) Patti Smith's intro vocals
to "Gloria" on her "Horses"  album:  "Jesus died for somebody's sins but
not mine."  I rolled the drums first, then brought in the bass, then
Patti.  Simple, but I was hooked!  It was so mesmerizing to listen to the
loops slip past each other:  each time one would come around again, the
other loops would be in different relative positions.  Perhaps I am easily
amused, but this affected me powerfully!

Describing my latest loop fun necessitates speaking of gear.  Last weekend
I dug out my old Commodore-64 and an ancient little program called "SID
Editor" (from COMPUTE!'s Gazette magazine, June 1984) which is a BASIC
utility that lets you set and alter in real time all the parameters of the
64's wonderful sound chip (Sound Interface Device).  I had played with
this program a 13 years ago but was not really into audio experimentation
like I am now.  Anyway....the SID chip has three oscillators, each with
selectable frequencies, waveforms and envelopes, plus there are filters,
ring modulation, and synchronization available (I'm not really versed in
all these terms, so I'll just say that there are a bunch of parameters you
can play with!)  

How does this relate to looping?  Well, basically you can set up the three
oscillators, etc., to create rhythmic or quite turbulent sounds as they
resonate and interfere with each other, and by careful changes in
frequency and other settings, you can arrive at incredible repeating
patterns of cascading complex sounds, some very weird and funky, some very
beautiful (I've heard similar sounds tuning around on a shortwave radio,
but this was better because I could control them in very interesting
ways). 

I guess I can generalize this discussion by asking if any of you have ever
played with multiple oscillators to create loops?  In this case the sounds
themselves are the source of the loop, because of the interference
patterns (moire effects?) created.  I know this is not looping in the
sense that is most often discussed here, but what the heck....

-Ken Fletcher