First Use of Tape Delay?

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject:

Trivia: Re light years ahead.. yes.. but when people go "Tangerine Dream and Edgar Froese" I go "Mother Mallards and David Borden". There is no question about it. You guys have the first brilliant synth band on your hands and you don´t even know it. Laughing

I really admire Borden´s attempts to compose music for his early incarnations of Mother Mallard´s. It´s bright, daring and well done.

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:10 pm Post subject:

Blue Hell · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:17 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject:

rlainhart · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 7:52 am Post subject:

On the subject of early obscure electronic music composers, check out The Tone Generation podcast series:

http://www.simonsound.co.uk/sound

Lots of historical electronic music from around the world.

And, to get back on the subject, I've heard that Stockhausen's "Solo", from 1962 (?), is the first use of extended tape delay, although it's unclear from the descriptions I've read of it whether it uses two decks or not.

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:31 am Post subject:

Seems like a nice link Richard, saving some podcasts now.

Was wondering, why is the two tape recorder aspect so important to you?

rlainhart · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:40 am Post subject:

As I mentioned, it's for a project I'm working on which uses all-analog hardware, including the Time Lag Accumulator. As part of the historical background for the project, I want to know when that technique was first used, given that most people think Fripp invented it.

cbm · Joined: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 227 Location: San Francisco

rlainhart · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:29 am Post subject:

It's looking like Terry Riley was one of the original proponents, if the not first. Stockhausen gets a vote too, although in all probability, it was some anonymous studio tech who actually thought it up. If so, it would be nice to give that person some credit.

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:11 am Post subject:

cbm · Joined: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 227 Location: San Francisco

rlainhart · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:38 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:01 pm Post subject:

Let´s make lists.

Here is my contribution. I´ll only include studios for which I can remember the exact name and year.

1.
Pierre Schaeffer established GRM out of his Club d'Essai. This would be early 1952 or 1951( ? )

2.
RAI's Studio di Fonologia, Milan 1953

3.
Studio Eksperymentalne, Warsaw 1957

4.
WDR's Studio für Elektronische Musik, Cologne 1951

5.
the Apalac, Brussels 1959

6.
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, 1951

7.
BBC Radiophonic Workshop 1958

8.
The Electronic studio- NHK, Japan 1955

9.
Philips Research Laboratories /Instituut voor Sonologi, Eindhoven 1956

10.
Siemens Studio For Electronic Music, Munich 1956 or 1959 depending on who you ask.

There are of course many more, but I´ll have to find some late 70s textbooks in order to figure out the names and locations and so forth.

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:24 pm Post subject:

The pre-Radiophonic Workshop era work of Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe at the BBC should be mentioned as well. Some the work they did around 56/57 was pretty stunning. Too bad I haven´t managed to collect each and every bit. Sad

I´ve failed. Shocked

Daphne established her Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Kent in 1959.

Her music: http://www.stalk.net/paradigm/pd21.html

And there there other home studio owners like Raymond Scott. Very Happy

I´ve hard to believe that a guy like Raymond wouldn´t try out long multitap tape echo at the first opportunity possible. Very Happy

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:57 pm Post subject:

I just discovered that I think I´ve confused an issue here. I´ve been talking about long multi tap delays using magnetic tape. Obviously that is not what Richard is asking for here, but then wouldn´t using two plain stock reel to reel decks instead of an early electronic studio custom job be the poor man´s solution for something that would already be an established technique for obtaining long tape delays? Everyone doing tape deck design and engineering at AEG, Siemens, Philips, Ferrograph and others would of course know about this as well as any technically minded visitors to the early electronic studios. Who would even consider claiming this innovation? Sun Ra obviously did, but then the Sun Ra mythology is something else altogether. Other contributions can simply be explained as fan mythology based on observations done by people not really familiar with the field.

As for the Frippertronics rig, the way I remember this explained in interviews from that time, it was more about a creative workflow applied on an implementation of multi tapped loops. THis would of course lead to a new myth because the music press obviously was not familiar with the field at all. And yes, I did read the articles in NME and Melody Maker. I think even Sounds mentioned the first big Frippertronics event in London.

IMO, from a sober academic viewpoint the reasoning above should stand as the definitive solution for this problem, at least until we have established exactly who made the first custom deck of this kind for an electronic studio.
Chances are however that the technique would have been known since the early days of the AEG Magnetophone as well as from the wire recorders set up for sound archiving purposes. AFAIK, some of devices would have a playback/monitoring head set up at a far longer distance from the recording head as would a 50s reel to reel magnetic tape deck.
Thus the method itself would have been known by the engineers already at the prototyping stage. As for the music making issue, the most sound bet would be the first installation of a custom multi-tap rig.

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject:

v-un-v · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:12 pm Post subject:

I got a copy of this very Oramics CD on eBay recently. Apparently it is quite rare. It's excellent too.

We probably haven't a clue what was also being done behind the iron curtain either. The ANS is now credited as the oldest synthesiser (I'm sure that someone will contest this here Wink

)

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject:

The iron curtain! Yes! Well, "we" do know a lot but it never got out onto the web because the generation in the west who did know are now in their early to late 70s, they are mostly europeans and they haven´t been part of the US branded version of "modern experimental music".

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:21 pm Post subject:

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject:

picture delay ... with a patient subject Rolling Eyes

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cbm · Joined: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 227 Location: San Francisco

cbm · Joined: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 227 Location: San Francisco

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:55 pm Post subject:

One source:

http://whitefiles.org/rws/r02.htm

elmacaco · Joined: Jul 21, 2007 Posts: 14 Location: NY

Regarding Sun Ra, I read in a biography that he got a sort of reverb effect early on by connecting an input to an output on a tape recorder. The author may have distorted this through lack of understanding, but there is something resembling electronic reverb sound on some of the 50/60's stuff that doesn't sound like 2 machines set up inline. There are other albums that clearly have a delay in this way, and often the release date was a few years after the record date, but I don't think he invented this usage.

He is an innovator of note however. Not only being one of the first to get and embrace the Hammond solovox in the 50's, debuting the minimoog model B on stage, first to record with a clavinete, etc. But he spent a lot of time around Berkeley, I have a recording of him clearly describing a buchla synthesizer he played, as well as a chromalodian (??), so he was in those circles and sought out new developments and people on the fringe, so these Ideas could have come to him through the SFTMC or other pioneers. Then again, maybe he did ?

Sun Ra doesn't get the respect he deserves, IMO.