Figure 2
I then played the cassette on a Fostex M-26 Multitrack tape recorder, and recorded the output into my DAW, for a total of 17 loops/passes over the playhead.
“ If we do this long enough, the tape will start to degrade. Not quick enough for a ‘Disintegration Loops’ [Basinski] experience all in one go, but every time it passes the two playheads it’s a different occasion, it’s a different experience. It’s evolving. This is something you don’t get with sequencers. Everytime it happens digitally, all the 0s and 1s line up. Whereas this, if listening closely we would hear the changes. If I was monitoring this properly I would also be making little changes. Tiniest little movements.” - Robin the Fog
In my conversation with Robin the Fog, as well as within my further research into tape and temporality, one of the key phenomena that is often cited in relation to tape loops is the changing nature of the sound and how this plays with expectations. This is best evidenced through Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’ (2001), where each pass over the playhead resulted in the tapes' audible deterioration. However, this effect is often happening in less explicit ways, and I therefore sought to experiment in order to provide a visual representation of this phenomena.
Utilising U+I’s software Metasynth, I took an image of myself and converted it into a sound.
I edited the image I was processing to remove any background content, so that there was a clear definition between foreground and background. When running this sound through a spectrogram (for which I used Izotope’s Insight 2), the original image is visible in the spectral content (
Figure 1
I then recorded the sound to a tape loop, which I built myself using old tape that had been left unprotected on a windowsill for 13 weeks in an attempt to create a natural deterioration (Figure 2).
Figure 2 I then played the cassette on a Fostex M-26 Multitrack tape recorder, and recorded the output into my DAW, for a total of 17 loops/passes over the playhead.
Although there is a noticeable audible change each time the loop passes the playhead, the change is more evident when the audio is analysed through the spectragram (Figures 3 - 20).
[The figures' respective numbers indicate the chronology of when they passed the playhead]
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Each pass of the playhead resulted in a slightly different warping and reshaping of the spectral image. However, this was not gradual deterioration as per Disintegration Loops, but instead was more random. This is best evidenced through Figures 4, 11 and 15 (and to a lesser extent 19), whose image retains the closest similarity to that of the original form in Figure 1. The result is proof of concept for what Robin describes in the opening quote, that tape loops result in little natural changes that you do not get within the clinical world of digital audio loops.
List of software and equipment mentioned
Fostex X-26 Multitracker
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/240141/Fostex-X-26.html
Izotope Insight 2
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/insight.html
U+I Metasynth
https://uisoftware.com/metasynth/