Re: Dig if u will my research paper Chapter 3

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

Title: Re: Dig if u will my research paper Chapter 3

At 7:04 PM +0100 6/4/03, Geoff Smith wrote:

> Thanks for that Richard,
> I will correct this.

It's a really minor thing in the grand scheme of things!

You realize this is out on the main list! I have not problem with that, but it's your choice whether to continue this off-list.

> I remember you instructing me to look at
> the music of Daniel Lentz and I think Carl Stone, I didn't get a
> chance to look at that much of their music, I would be interested to
> know what else you thought I left out of my history.

The importance of various composers and performers depends a lot on the scope of such a history. We've seen recently how invested some people are in the differences between various "schools" or "categories" or "genres" or "styles" of mediated-repetitive music. I think for a history focusing on live looping in the sense of on-the-spot recording and playback there are certain people who might be less significant as direct influences.

For instance, Daniel Lentz: To my knowledge there was no improvisational element to his delay-based work, but it certainly was some of the most elaborate real-time composed delay music. I'd go so far as to say that his compositions are the most precisely crafted and executed of any music based on the mechanism of real-time recording and playback.

As to Carl Stone's work, most of it is  not loop music in a conventional sense, but he was one of the first to use extreme instances of multiply-layered recorded material (using analog tape), live phrase sampling (using a Publison), turntablist/glitch improvisation (again with a Publison, but more recently with Max/MSP).

It's also essential to loop at Hugh LeCaine's work. His loop-based performance instruments were among the first real looping instruments (though they were preceded by the ORTF devices and others). He carried this development through several design iterations, and he was influential on others (such as Pauline Oliveros).

> It was hard for me to include everything
> due to 10000word limit

If there were to be a book, or a journal article, this might be relaxed.

> Talking to Jim Fulkerson about the
> contemporary classical side of Looping was really interesting and
> there is clearly a whole world of artists I haven't looked
> at.

I think one can find many different "contemporary classical side[s]" depending on who one talks to. There have been many pockets of activity and often the practitioners were only tangentially (if at all) aware of each other's work. A lot of people may have done a few experimental pieces and moved on to other ideas. This happens all the time in artists' development.

There are probably a lot of pieces floating around (or now lost to all but a few people's memories). Some of these may have been influential on a small number of composers, but you'll probably never know about them.

For instance, here are two of my own experiences:

> 1) In the summer of 1967 I spent an afternoon with a group
> of friends smoking enormous amounts of dope while listening to the
> newly-released Sgt. Pepper's album playing over and over on an
> auto-reverse tape deck. During this time, or host (a very well-known
> figure in the computer music and digital audio world, who at that time
> was an undergraduate at MIT) also played a tape piece he had created
> from the countoffs from many recordings by the Beatles and others. The
> basic "ground" pattern was the
> "one...two...three...four..." from Taxman, and I think I
> also remember counts from I Saw Her Standing There, Sgt. Pepper's
> (reprise), Woolly Bully, and others.
>
> 2) In 1976 I saw a demonstration of tape delay techniques
> at the Audio Engineering Society convention in Los Angeles. Besides
> the well-loved dual deck method, one of the tricks shown was a
> technique of quickly placing a machine into reverse playback mode by
> simply rethreading the tape the wrong way around the capstan. I used
> this on one of my own pieces by running a normal dual-deck 
> 4-track delay during the first 2/3 of a piece, then stopping and
> rethreading before playing the tape back at double speed through the
> remaining 1/3.

These were small influences on my compositional thought, and it seems unlikely that these experiences were also influential on other composers. I think there are a lot of similar situations, all of which added together result in a set of related ideas being "in the air."

> I almost wish i hadn't re-written my
> introduction to include the idea of 'genre' in Live-Looping and left
> it as a history. It has been almost like a thorn in my side, because I
> am really interested in the history, and most of my time has been
> spent talking about genre.

I don't think it's wasted, but it is a can o' worms whenever you try to impose a sense of order or "theory" on an organically evolving practice (or collection thereof).

> I still hope you write a
> book.

Show me the money!

-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD      
(818) 788-2202                                 
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com