Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Blues for Samuel Beckett
Here are the notes for a track I played last week from a compilation entitled "Memories of Sam" loaned to me by Ruth Waldhauer. They are in Leroy "Sam" Parkins' words:
Blues for Samuel Beckett (Track 3)
What it says on the tape box is, "Music performed and organized by Leroy Parkins. Electronic sounds designed and built by Fred Waldhauer. Now Fred needs a trip all his own. World class engineer/inventor at the Bell labs, his name is on the patent for the transistor (at RCA-his first gig out of Cornell). It was to his room at Cornell at the fraternity TKE I repaired after every Saturday gig no matter how stoned or how late-to listen to endless Bird records while he downed Ballentine's Ale-those green bottles-by the quart. Big green bottles.
But later. In those first years in New York I was a frequent to his pad in suburban New Jersey, where his excellent wife, Ruth, fed me, and we evolved electronic music, starting in maybe 1959. We were inventing the synthesizer but didn't know it. I lost Fred to Rauschenberg and David Tudor in about '62 and we never finished it. Thomas (sic) Moog did.
"Blues for Samuel Beckett" uses a page from Beckett's novel (if you can call it that), "Watt", where he notates what hearing three frogs at once sounds like:
oog.........oog.........oog.........oog.........oog.........oog........oog
..urk............urk............urk............urk............urk
....ooom................ooom...................ooom..............ooom
This kind of "phasing" is stuff of minimalism-which of course didn't exist by that name. I had started using it as a compositional tool in the late 50s, so reading "Watt" gave me a flash of recognition-oh-someone else thought of that...Scored for: top frog flute and flute parts (head joint with finger stuck in it); middle frog-clarinet and pieces of clarinet incl. top two pieces with finger therein. Bottom frog-bass oscillator. Plus other related noises. It's Halloween music. Some night....sit down with the kids, turn the lights out, turn it up a bit too loud and see if it scares everybody. Fred and I scared ourselves pretty good when we first played it back. Primitive. Tape delay is all we had. Several tape-to-tape over dubs. Mono of course. But the first industrial strength semi-pro tape recorder. Pre-Studer/Revox or Teac.
Blogger's Note: I had to insert periods between the frog sounds to accurately indicate spacing.
Blues for Samuel Beckett (Track 3)
What it says on the tape box is, "Music performed and organized by Leroy Parkins. Electronic sounds designed and built by Fred Waldhauer. Now Fred needs a trip all his own. World class engineer/inventor at the Bell labs, his name is on the patent for the transistor (at RCA-his first gig out of Cornell). It was to his room at Cornell at the fraternity TKE I repaired after every Saturday gig no matter how stoned or how late-to listen to endless Bird records while he downed Ballentine's Ale-those green bottles-by the quart. Big green bottles.
But later. In those first years in New York I was a frequent to his pad in suburban New Jersey, where his excellent wife, Ruth, fed me, and we evolved electronic music, starting in maybe 1959. We were inventing the synthesizer but didn't know it. I lost Fred to Rauschenberg and David Tudor in about '62 and we never finished it. Thomas (sic) Moog did.
"Blues for Samuel Beckett" uses a page from Beckett's novel (if you can call it that), "Watt", where he notates what hearing three frogs at once sounds like:
oog.........oog.........oog.........oog.........oog.........oog........oog
..urk............urk............urk............urk............urk
....ooom................ooom...................ooom..............ooom
This kind of "phasing" is stuff of minimalism-which of course didn't exist by that name. I had started using it as a compositional tool in the late 50s, so reading "Watt" gave me a flash of recognition-oh-someone else thought of that...Scored for: top frog flute and flute parts (head joint with finger stuck in it); middle frog-clarinet and pieces of clarinet incl. top two pieces with finger therein. Bottom frog-bass oscillator. Plus other related noises. It's Halloween music. Some night....sit down with the kids, turn the lights out, turn it up a bit too loud and see if it scares everybody. Fred and I scared ourselves pretty good when we first played it back. Primitive. Tape delay is all we had. Several tape-to-tape over dubs. Mono of course. But the first industrial strength semi-pro tape recorder. Pre-Studer/Revox or Teac.
Blogger's Note: I had to insert periods between the frog sounds to accurately indicate spacing.
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