Title link takes you to a video of Robert Fripp demonstrating Frippertronics in 1979, on SoNiCbRaT. Anyone know if this indeed was the start of live sample based looping? Live being the key difference from previous forms of looping.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Robert Fripp Frippertronics
Title link takes you to a video of Robert Fripp demonstrating Frippertronics in 1979, on SoNiCbRaT. Anyone know if this indeed was the start of live sample based looping? Live being the key difference from previous forms of looping.
13 comments:
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I'm pretty sure it's assumed that Terry Riley's "Music for The Gift" was the first live use of looping, as it was based on accumulating feedback loops (I think the source sounds were all recorded material, but the introduction of each new sound and controlling the feedback would have had to been done in real-time).
ReplyDeleteCertainly Alvin Lucier's "I am sitting in a room" predates by a few years the stuff Eno and Fripp did on No Pussyfooting.
Awesome!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty well known that Robert Fripp was introduced to this technique of live tape loops by Brian Eno. Eno himself in an interview that I read a number of years ago mention that he was influenced by a Terry Riley concert he attended while in art school.
ReplyDeletethis makes me want to open this bruise i got to let the bruise blood come out to show them.
ReplyDeletecome to think of it, Sunday All Over The World had a song called "Blood Bruise Tattoo." coincidence?
yeah, Steve Reich's tape music could definitely be noted as the start of live sample based looping. Also Gordon Mumma did lots of live recording around the same time. I love this photo of him wi his cybersonic horn.
ReplyDeletehttp://brainwashed.com/mumma/images/HP.GM.jpg
Much as I love Steve Reich's early tape pieces, I think a distinction should be made between the "Time Lag Accumulator", live feedback, tape stuff that came out of the S.F. Tape Music Center, and actually tape-looped tape pieces like "It's Gonna Rain". The first time I heard No Pussyfooting, I thought that Terry Riley should have gotten a credit. Poppy Nogood uses essentially the same technique, with two Revoxes and an audio feedback path.
ReplyDeleteThe "Live Looping" esthetic involves creating/building loops in real time, not using pre-recorded loops as in the "traditional" tape loop stuff, such as "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out". The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" is pretty tape-loop infested, as well.
Lots of discussion of looping in all its many manifestations on Looper's Delight.
BTW, I'm a huge Steve Reich and Terry Riley admirer, and an on-again-off-again Fripp fan.
I dunno, what is supposed to be so special here? Maybe I'm tone deaf but all I hear is him playing a tape.
ReplyDeleteI am sitting in a room, similar to the one you are sitting in now.
ReplyDelete...
niamsitrosimrtoroomnowggg
I love that work almost as much as 'Uh yes, Uh no' by Andy Warhol.
synthbaron - from this example, I can see how you would get that idea because you don't get to see him build the loop; he starts the tape after he's already added a bunch of stuff. In concert it takes a few minutes to build up an interesting bed, and he only had a few minutes for this broadcast.
ReplyDeleteThe basic idea is just one of playing stuff into a long delay, with pretty high feedback. In Fripp's case he can control the amount of his guitar that goes into the delay independently of the amount of guitar that we hear, via two volume pedals. As he solos he will fade notes into the delay line. If you can get past the cute name that he applied to a technique that existed for the better part of a decade before he was shown it by Eno (who at least acknowledges the sources), it's a fairly interesting technique.
These days, instead of a pair of Revox, Fripp uses Eventides.
There are a number of commercial devices that do looping today. The Looper's Delight site I listed earlier in the thread has a lot of info on history, techniques, and equipment.
why didnt he just use the Frippertronic VST :-)
ReplyDeleteOh... nice sharing of info... Chris, I've quoted your comments, updated on my video site... :)
ReplyDeleteBaron von Synthhausen: his format for this period was to spend 5-15 minutes looping with the Frippertronics rig, then to rewind the tape and start it again in play mode, and solo over top of it.
ReplyDeletethis is why "God Save the Queen" and "Let the Power Fall" don't really convey what actually happened at his Exposure Non-Tour of record stores, shopping malls, pizza parlours, and hair salons.
i think that Fripp's contribution to the art form was definitely one of context. while Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros were rather firmly contained within an academic/art music context, Bob Fripp used tape delay as a vehicle to wage war against the recording industry establishment in a theatre of commoners. that doesn't mean that everyone he played for "got it", but at least it was presented to them first and not cordoned off.
and of course "getting it" was beside the point ... he was demonstrating the future of the small, mobile, intelligent unit aided with technology which he claimed would be all that survived the rapidly-approaching fall of the music industry.
Very cool to see this. I've been wanting to experiment with this technique since the first time I heard "God Save the Queen". (Actually, I heard the technique on "Exposure" before that, but at the time I didn't realize what I was listening to.) 25 years later, I was finally able to do it with the help of a Boss DD-20. Now, I'm experimenting with using Csound to build much more complex delay pipes. Fun stuff.
ReplyDeleteAnd for those who mentioned it, Fripp has always acknowledged Eno introduced him to the technique, and that he was aware that Eno in turn got it from someone else although he didn't get into the sources.