Reel-to-reel Audio Tape Recording - As A Musical Instrument

As A Musical Instrument

Early reel-to-reel users realized that segments of tape could be spliced together and otherwise manipulated by adjusting playback speed or direction of a given recording. In the same way as modern keyboards allow sampling and playback at different speeds, a reel-to-reel could accomplish similar feats in the hands of a talented user. Consider:

• The title track of Jimi Hendrix's album Are You Experienced, on which the guitar solo and much of the drum track was recorded, then played backwards on a reel-to-reel.
• The Beatles recorded many songs using reel to reel tape as a part of the creative process. Examples include "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Yellow Submarine" which used a technique where stock recordings were cut up and then randomly reassembled and overdubbed on to the songs (recordings of calliope organs on "Mr. Kite", and recordings of marching bands on "Yellow Submarine"). On "Tomorrow Never Knows" multiple tape machines were used all interconnected patching tape loops that had been prepared by the band. The loops were played in a variety of ways such as backwards, sped up and slowed down. To record the song the machines, which were located in separate studio rooms, were all manned by individual technicians and played at once to record on the fly. "Strawberry Fields Forever" combined two different taped versions of the song. The versions were independently altered in speed to end up together miraculously both on pitch and tempo. "I Am the Walrus" used a radio tuner patched into the sound console to layer random live broadcast over an existing taped track. "Revolution 9" also had many effects produced using a reel-to-reel and tape editing techniques.
• Delia Derbyshire, who performed the original Doctor Who theme by recording various sounds including oscillators and then manually cutting together each individual note on a group of reel-to-reels.
• Aaron Dilloway, founding member of Wolf Eyes, often utilizes a reel to reel tape machine in his solo performances.
• Yamantaka Eye of the band Boredoms uses a reel-to-reel tape as an instrument in live performances and in post-production (a good example would be in the track "Super You" from the album Super æ).
• The Gasman who produced much of his early work on Planet Mu Records splicing old reel-to-reel classical music into loops.
• Mission of Burma, whose fourth member Martin Swope "played" a reel-to-reel tape recorder live, either playing previously recorded samples at certain times or recording part of the band's performance and playing it back either in reverse or at different speeds. When the band re-formed in 2002, audio engineer Bob Weston took over Swope's role at the tape deck.
• Musique concrète in general.
• Pink Floyd's cash register introduction to their track "Money" was made using a loop of "splices" which was looped around a mic stand and through a tape player.
• Steve Tibbetts is a recording artist who includes tape editing as a significant portion of the creative process.
• Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It For the Money, both of which featured edits too numerous to mention, in addition to multiple instances of speed alteration and intricately layered samples upon samples.
• The improviser Jerome Noetinger uses a ReVox A77 reel-to-reel to create and manipulate tape loops in live performance.

In addition, multiple reel-to-reel machines used in tandem can also be used to create echo and delay effects. The Frippertronics configuration used by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp on numerous of their 1970s and '80s recordings illustrates these possibilities.