Common Tape Manipulation Techniques and How They Relate to Modern Electronic Music Matthew A. Bardin Experimental Music & Digital Media Center for Computation & Technology Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
[email protected] ABSTRACT the 'play head' was utilized to reverse the process and gen- The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical context erate the output's audio signal [8]. Looking at figure 1, from to some of the common schools of thought in regards to museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org (Accessed: 03/20/2020), tape composition present in the later half of the 20th cen- the locations of the heads can be noticed beneath the rect- tury. Following this, the author then discusses a variety of angular protective cover showing the machine's model in the more common techniques utilized to create these and the middle of the hardware. Previous to the development other styles of music in detail as well as provides examples of the reel-to-reel machine, electronic music was only achiev- of various tracks in order to show each technique in process. able through live performances on instruments such as the In the following sections, the author then discusses some of Theremin and other early predecessors to the modern syn- the limitations of tape composition technologies and prac- thesizer. [11, p. 173] tices. Finally, the author puts the concepts discussed into a modern historical context by comparing the aspects of tape composition of the 20th century discussed previous to the composition done in Digital Audio recording and manipu- lation practices of the 21st century. Author Keywords tape, manipulation, history, hardware, software, music, ex- amples, analog, digital 1.