All-Star Jam

 Posted by
Apr 152007
 


Be Brave.

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  13 Responses to “All-Star Jam”

  1. Mr. Moderator

    Love it!

    Good stuff coming this week, folks, including the kick-off of Hear Factor. Mix CDs are arriving, and we should have some challenging matches among them. Thanks.

    Stay tuned, too, for an exclusive follow up of the piece Townsman kpdexter did on Beard of Thunder, the album made up of Robert Pollard’s new melodies, lyrics, and vocals over the backing tracks to an old Phantom Tollbooth Album, Power Toy.

    You can also expect an examination of the iconic role the motorcycle has played in rock. And more. Of course.

  2. hrrundivbakshi

    Can somebody please explain what “Frippertronics” is, besides a couple of tape decks playing new age-y synth loops, over which Fripp tastily noodles?

    Thanks in advance —

    HVB

  3. BRAVE!

    mullet

    Ludwig Van Jerkoff

  4. Mr. Moderator

    I think you’ve defined Frippertronics, HVB. Then there’s the matter of Heavy Matters and all those new models that Fripp’s been known to go on about. I’ll take some time this week and see if I can examine it in further detail.

  5. BigSteve

    The Wikipedia article has some technical detail about the set-up:

    ‘Frippertronics (a term coined by Joanna Walton, Fripp’s poet girlfriend in the late 1970s) is an analog delay system consisting of two reel-to-reel tape recorders situated side-by-side. The two machines are configured so that the tape travels from the supply reel of the first machine to the take-up reel of the second, thereby allowing sound recorded by the first machine to be played back some time later on the second. The audio of the second machine is routed back to the first, causing the delayed signal to repeat while new audio is mixed in with it. The amount of delay (usually 8 to 10 seconds) is controlled by increasing or decreasing the distance between the machines.”

    It also says that Fripp now uses digital equipment to do more or less the same thing.

  6. hrrundivbakshi

    BigSteve: if that is in fact what Frippertronics is/was, then Fripp ain’t using it in this clip. All I see and hear is Fripp noodling (nicely) to a tape loop. Nonw of what he’s recording is making it back to tape, and the backing track doesn’t seem to be changing.

  7. hrrundivbakshi

    I take it back, the backing track is looping back on itself and changing somewhat.

  8. BigSteve

    I didn’t want to reprint the entire article. There’s a difference between ‘pure’ Frippertronics, which is just the loops, and a performance where he’s soloing over the playback of the loops.

  9. Interesting stuff, townspeople!

  10. general slocum

    Hrrundi, when he started doing those Frippertronics tours in the late seventies, he would set up in odd non-venues or small concert spaces, and it was usually not a sit-and-watch kind of thing, but just milling about and what not. He would set up the 2 decks, and start playing those long tones and build up loops where the notes would slowly degenerate to silence over 30 seconds or so with fresh ones being added. An excellent sample of this is the God Save the King side of Under Heavy Manners. Then, if he was taken by one of the tracks of loops, it would all be stored on the take-up reel of the second deck, and he would just rewind what he had just played, and solo over it, which is what he’s doing here. All the sounds on the tape loop are guitar, laid down one note at a time. I still really enjoy those records, and my favorites, though I think his solos are beutiful, are the ones without. That whole process schtick.

    I saw Jon Hassell once, and he did similar things with one of those old Electro Harmonics 16 second analog delay pedals.

  11. BigSteve

    Wow this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music was just announced — Ornette Coleman’s Sound Grammar album. And they gave a ‘special citation’ to John Coltrane.

  12. general slocum

    The Poll:
    What’s Robert Fripp’s most self-important addition to rock?

    So, given that Fripp has an immense self-importance base line to start, you could say that any addition he makes would be self-important. But the poll is asking not which is most important, but which is most *self* important, right? Which one Fripp would hear the most inner-applause for? Just curious about Mr. Mod’s slant…

  13. Mr. Moderator

    Townsman General, you have sussed the subtleties of the poll question re: Fripp. I can only hope that our Townspeople voted with this knowledge.

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