First Use of Tape Delay?

[rlainhart]

For a project I'm working on, I'm trying to find out who first used and recorded with long tape delays as a compositional tool. I'm referring specifically to the technique of running a reel of tape between two reel-to-reel decks to achieve long delay times (not to the standard technique of record-to-playback head echo with a single machine.)

The first composer to use it, and the first recorded piece using that technique that I know of, is Pauline Oliveros' "I of IV" from 1966. Does anyone know of anyone who used it earlier, and especially anyone who released any earlier recordings using long tape delays? Thanks!

[elektro80]

I´m pretty sure that I´ve heard several US made radio plays from the early 50s that have utilized long delays using magnetized media.
Apart from that, I´m also pretty sure there must be some early works from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop sporting multi-tapped tape loops multi and delays.

OK, and then there is Studio Eksperymentalne in Warzaw, Poland. I think they did have long multi tapped tape echo as early as 1963.

[elektro80]

I should add that I might have mentioned cases involving custom setups and not simply two plain reel to reel recorders.

[cappy2112]

[v-un-v]

I do remember reading somewhere that it was Sun Ra who discovered tape delay/ echo on his recording "Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow", recorded in 1961. But this seems somewhat dubious, because like Stein quite rightly pointed out, the Radiophonic workshop's first ever recording used tape echo/ feedback. Wasn't this in the 1950's?

Also there was all those surf bands who used tape delay (or a rotating oil can filed with oil and iron-filings). Also what about Pierre Henry or Pierre Schaffer?

Talking of Pierre Henry....Messe Pour le Temps! The Ballet too!!

[rlainhart]

Thanks, but I'm not looking for the standard tape-head echo technique, as created with a single three-head tape deck, or any techniques involving tape loops, Echoplexes, slapback, sound-on-sound, SelSync, or what have you.

I'm looking specifically for the first use and first recording of music based on long delays (greater than 5 seconds), created by running tape between two reel-to-reel decks located some distance apart, with the supply reel on the first deck and the take-up reel on the second. You then record audio into the first deck, play it back on the second, and feed that playback into the first machine to create the long repeating delays in realtime.

For those unfamiliar with this, this is also known as the "Frippertronics" system, but developed years before Fripp's first use of it.

Thanks!

[elektro80]

Long multi-tap echo on tape would involve either two decks as rlainhart describes.. or custom jobs involving several sets of heads, a seriously lenghtened and adjustable tape travel and head feed mixers. The one setup used at NRK in Oslo in the early 60s used aux outs and ins for using other reel to reel decks for adding pre delays or more echo between the taps.

[elektro80]

Anyways, this would be fairly easy to sort out. AFAIK, it would be absolutely dooable to make a list of the most important "academic" sound studios with tape equipment ( and set up for entertaining clever academic composers ) .
There is at least one and a half generation of people still alive who would be possible to reach by a simple phone call.

Actually, the one guy to call first would be the norwegian composer Arne Nordheim. He did some really stunning work involving tape echo and he has been around as well. He would know who to call next.

[cbm]

[v-un-v]

I was just going to say Terry Riley

[Blue Hell]

Besides the wikipedia article on frippertronics there is also this one on tape loops, but it's not clear where the article refers to pre-recorded or live-recorded loops, neither is it clear if two machines are involved. It's funny that the two articles have no links to each other.

http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/equipment/analog_recorders/Analog_Recorders.html#Loops makes a clear distinction between loops and echoes ...

Then we have this article about delay mentioning Karl Heinz Stockhausen and Pierre Schaeffer to use up to "several" tape recorders for delays ... but not when ... and not specifically two ...

The we have :

[elektro80]

[Blue Hell]

The loopers delight link I gave above also states :

[rlainhart]

Blue Hell, thanks for that article - "time-lag accumulator" sounds like a good term for that system.

The tape-loop article was unclear. When I think of tape loops, I mean actual physical, spliced-together loops of tape with pre-recorded content, strung onto a tape deck and played back without further recorded input, Steve Reich's "Come Out" being the prime example of that.

Live looping, to my mind, requires some sort of feedback of the live recorded content back into the system, "A Rainbow In Curved Air" being an excellent example of that. That's the kind of system I'm referring to in my original question.

[elektro80]

Jan, I know that one.. but..

Considering that Studer Revox gear, often prototypes, were shipped directly to academic institutions in Europe, and Ferrograph often did the same.. and that basically the european avant garde and academic experimental music lay light years ahead of the US .. this would probably yet again be a myth.

[rlainhart]

Ah, I didn't see your second reply before I sent off the previous one. If the Looper's Delight article is correct, that might be the first usage of such a system, although it doesn't sound like it used live input, nor was used in live performance.

[Blue Hell]

[Blue Hell]

[elektro80]

Well, the obvious thing would be to call the guys still alive.

And I am fairly certain that using two decks wouldn´t be seen as a big issue at all. Engineering and electronic music in Europe at that time was basically about looking at the gear and then use it to the full potential. If you can do it with the gear right out of the box then there wouldn´t be any innovation going on at all. It would simply be about using the gear as it was intended to be used. This mindset is inherent in just about anything produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during its early years.

[elektro80]

[cbm]

[elektro80]

Excellent!

I knew I would tickle some vital parts.

Basically the list of legends in Europe doesn´t exist like it does in the US. The academic style didn´t allow that to happen. Instead the dudes and gals did what they did instead of making a fuzz out of it.

[cbm]

[elektro80]

Yes, that ´s an excellent point. They actually did manage to get stuff out on vinyl. It just happened for some reason, and that changed everything.

When I think back, I tend to remember that it was more common to hear US avant garde on the radio here in Norway in the 60s than european material. The recordings did of course exist but not on vinyl.

Try this: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=12771

The modern music history in Europe is bit more complex than what is commonly known. There are many alternative Schoenbergs and several different paths to enlightenment.

The utterly brilliant and original composer Fartein Valen is one starting point. You may want to google the guy.

A point to make is that modernism in music probably kept at it for way longer over here than in the US and that what for you guys in the US became known as East Europe was for us over here something completely different. Within the field of academic modern classcial music, this section of Europe was still a part of Europe. I mentioned the Subharchord in post way back in this thread. That one came out of the Communist Block.

It was in fact both possible and seen as a smart move for a mad norwegian composer to study electronic music in Warzaw in the mid 50s. ( Arne Nordheim )

[Blue Hell]