A Journey in Audio Editing History: Part 3

What I like most when journeying for fun is to temporarily abandon the main route to explore something that catches my attention along the track. While tape audio editing is the main topic of this multi-part post, there’s something I’d like to discuss for a moment.

We talked about stutter-editing (in part 1) and looping (in part 2), two techniques that remind the use of digital samplers. Now the question is: is there any point of contact between such different technologies as analog tape machines and digital samplers?

The answer is, yes, analog samplers. Here is a video about a drum machine based on tape loops. The device is monophonic, having a single magnetic head that the operator can manually move from one loop to another.

A more advanced device, used in albums by Beatles and Pink Floyd, is the Mellotron. This is a polyphonic device, having a magnetic head for each individual tape loop. Here is a vintage demo video presenting the Mellotron.

This video captures a maintenance procedure allowing to see the internal tape pack. Tapes are visible side by side, mounted on a frame. Each individual tape corresponds to a key on the keyboard, and to its dedicated magnetic head.

A Journey in Audio Editing History: Part 2

As seen in part 1 (posted here), inertia inherent to mechanical parts of a tape machine prevents seamless playback of audio fragments scattered along the tape. A solution to this problem involves physically cutting tape and joining splices to create a new sequence as required.

A similar problem, and solution, occur when trying to seamlessly repeat an audio segment multiple times, a technique called “playing a loop”. Usually a loop requires accurate alignment of its boundaries, in order to create a correct rhythmic pattern or anyway a continuous texture.

With a reel-to-reel machine, this is again a matter of razor blades and sticky tape.

Here is how to make a tape loop with analog tape, recreating in this tutorial the intro of the song “Money” from the album “The Dark Side of the Moon” (Pink Floyd, 1973).

Now back to the Sixties. Here lovely Delia Derbyshire, at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, shows how to layer multiple loops by tapping transport buttons on the beat. Amazing.