Analog looping

[Dave Stagner <dstagner@icarus.net>]

I think maybe we've hit on a new thread here.  I'm sure most of us
here would agree that digital sound involves some serious compromise,
especially for highly dynamic, wide-range instruments like guitar.

So who is doing some sort of analog looping?  I'd love to find an old
analog Echoplex, or some other tape delay, but they're such a pain to
care for.  Anyone using the Frippertronics approach with two tape
decks?  I've done that one, helping a friend with an experimental
studio recording.  It's a big pain in the butt trying to get the two
tape machines running at exactly the same speed.  It's a good way to
get a big wowing mess and a tangle of half-track tape on the floor.
Sounds fantastic, though.

Like I said earlier, I "loop" with retuned acoustic guitar quite a
bit.  I like to play long, droning improvisations that change slowly
over time, and because I practice a lot I'm pretty good at it.  The
delays just make it easier.  Certain feedback approaches can feel like
looping, too.  During my brief flirtation with feedback, I would often
hold a feedback line together for minutes at a time, just letting the
guitar resonate and change.  I've also mentioned my delay/feedback
no-intervention experiments... what Eno would call "systems music".  

The upshot of this, I guess, is that there's a pretty fuzzy line
between traditional linear music and looping.  

-dave

By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly. 
Venus De Milo.
To a child she is ugly.       
   -Charles Fort              dstagner@icarus.net