Tape Recording Experiments Of The 1970's

by Charles Rice Goff III

1 You're Sixteen (Robert and Richard Sherman)
2 Canons For You
3 Newscene At Six II
4 Newscene At Six III
5 Orchestalled
6 Wait A Minute


Charles Rice Goff III became interested in recording sounds and music around 1963, when he was four years old. He has been actively pursuing that interest ever since. These excerpts from an interview that Jerry Kranitz of Aural Innovations did with Goff III in 2002 give a bit of background on Goff's early recording history:

Goff tells Kranitz: "I think I was about 4 years old. I remember my dad got a reel-to-reel monophonic tape recorder. And I was just fascinated by the whole thing… Later, when the Beatles "Sgt Peppers" record came out I was listening to that as a kid and to me it was so different than anything that I'd ever heard before. And I really thought that it was magic or something. And I thought to myself that this is what I want to do. I want to create magic like this… Later I got a little portable cassette tape recorder and I recorded everything. Then I used that one and that other funky one of my folks to do little overdubbings and stuff. And I did some Beatles songs and other stuff using the kazoo and a jews harp, and there is some singing. I still have a couple of those actually."

The complete Kranitz interview is available at the link below:
http://aural-innovations.com/issues/issue22/goffint.html

The first piece in this archive is one of those old recordings from Goff's childhood: a version of “You’re Sixteen” (written by Robert and Richard Sherman in 1960, made popular by Ringo Starr in 1973) recorded by Goff when he was 14 years old. The recording was one of Goff’s first “multi tracking” experiments. Very simply, Goff recorded sounds on one tape recorder, then played back the tape and performed new material along with it, recording the “mix” on a second tape recorder with a microphone in the room. This very lo fi experiment features a jews harp, a monkey drum, a kazoo, and a vocal, as well as a primal dosage of Goff’s bizarre improvisational skills.

Goff continued his experiments with this method of multitrack recording over the next several years and still dabbles in it today from time to time. Obviously, the sound qualities of these sorts of recordings vary according to both the equipment used to create them and the methods used in recording them. As with any audio recording, variations in microphone placement, speaker volume, input levels, etc. can all affect recording qualities, and Goff has spent considerable time exploring these variations over the years.

The second piece in this archive is an original Goff composition called “Canons For You”. The recording was made in early 1979 using this “microphones-in-the-room” recording technique, but the microphones and tape recorders were of much higher quality than those he used for “You’re Sixteen.” The sound quality of this piece is still quite lo-fi, however, and because adding more than three new tracks in this configuration significantly reduced the sound quality of the original track, Goff never added the vocals and drum sounds to “finish” this piece in the way he had originally intended. This recording of “Canons For You” features Goff performing on two electric guitar tracks and two saxophone tracks.

The last four pieces in this archive exhibit Goff’s love of tape recording by showcasing his use of the tape recorder as an instrument. Each of these pieces was created with reel to reel tape recorders in 1979. Goff composed these recordings in various ways, including re-recording their contents over and over at various speeds and pitches, cutting into single stereo channels while leaving the other channels unchanged, recording the start up and shut down sounds of the tape players, and by using built-in effects on the tape recorders.

Some specifics:

Track 3, "Newscene At Six II" and Track 4, "Newscene At Six III," feature modifications of a TV news broadcast and nothing else. Newscene III was first made available to the public in 1998 on a Taped Rugs Productions compilation cassette called "Remnants From Magic Carpets." The cassette was co-released by EE Tapes Of Belgium. Newscene III later appeared on a Taped Rugs CDR compilation entitled "-RE" in 2002.

Track 5, "Orchestalled," features Goff playing a wide variety of musical instruments. This piece was first made available to the public in 2006 on a Taped Rugs Compilation CDR release called "Strays."

Track 6, "Wait A Minute," features Goff on treated electronic guitar and was also first made available to the public on "-RE" in 2002.


Copyright 1973, 1979, 1998, 2002, 2006

by Taped Rugs Productions

www.geocities.com/padukem




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